Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1998-12-17
2002-06-11
Metjahic, Safet (Department: 2171)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C709S203000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06405214
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to the field of gathering and transmitting customer information. More specifically, this invention relates to the use of client/server programs to track customer product use.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Several systems and methods exist for facilitating communication between programs. One example of such a system and method is commonly known as the “client/server” model. Client/server refers to a relationship between two computer programs in which one program, the client, makes a service request from another program, the server, which fulfills the request. Although the client/server model is applicable to programs within a single computer, it is a more typically employed in network environments. In a network, the client/server model provides a convenient way to interconnect programs that encompass a number of different machines and/or locations.
Computer transactions using the client/server model are relatively common, and are used in applications ranging from online banking to internet shopping. With the near omnipresence of computer networks both local and widespread, the client/server model has become one of the central ideas of network computing. Most business applications being written today use the client/server model, as does TCP/IP, one of the building blocks of the internet.
The client/server model is typically implemented as follows. One program, known as the server or “daemon”, is activated and awaits requests from another program, the client. The client's request, typically for information such as account balances, etc., are received and acted upon by the server. In a common arrangement, the services of a single server program are shared by multiple client programs, with both the server and client programs forming parts of a larger program or application.
Perhaps the most widely-used example of the server/client model is the internet itself. In the internet environment, the user's web browser is a client program that requests services (the sending of Web pages or files) from a Web server (which technically is called a Hypertext Transport Protocol or HTTP server) in another computer somewhere on the Internet. Similarly, a user's computer may employ TCP/IP to make client requests for files from File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers in other computers on the Internet.
One of the ways that the client/server model is made more efficient over the internet is through the use of “magic cookies” or, more simply, “cookies”. A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a web server to store on a web browser, so that the information can later be read back from the same browser. The cookie is a relatively small text file placed in the browser file of the user's computer. The placement of this text file is known as “setting a cookie”, and is accomplished by adding row of text to the single cookie file present for each browser installed. Once set, the cookie is later retrieved by the server from the user's browser file on a subsequent visit to the same server.
The primary purpose of the cookie is to keep track of clients, i.e., to separately identify clients. One of the original problems that cookies were invented to solve was that of keeping the correct products in the correct customer's shopping cart during on-line shopping. The most common thing a server web site sets into the client's cookie is effectively a database key for its site. That is, the cookie sets a value that is unique to the individual client, and is universal to the population of clients that it servers. These values are essentially information infrastructure having to do with access and identity, rather than information “payload” unrelated to accessing a specific website.
Cookies can contain up to 340 lines of information, which include the domain of the server that originally set the cookie. Other information may include the user's identity, e-mail address, preferences , past website uses, or virtually any data that may be deemed useful by the server. Cookies are usually run from CGI scripts, but they can also be set or read by JavaScript.
Cookies are often used by browsers to store passwords and user ID's, eliminating the need for the user to re-enter this information on each visit to a site. They are also typically used to store preferences for start pages in browser applications such as Netscape Navigators and Internet Explorers. Electronic commerce applications can use cookies to keep track of the contents of a user's electronic “shopping cart”. This enables users to interrupt their shopping, then return to the site before the cookie expires (perhaps months or years later) and resume shopping with the same items remaining in the cart. Websites use cookies to retain information on user preferences (e.g., “no frames” or “text only”), thus saving the user from entering that information on every visit to the site.
Cookies can also be used for tracking the path of a user through a website. This allows the webmaster to identify so-called “Dead End Paths”, places in the website where users lose interest and leave. Cookies can also provide a more accurate counts of how many people have been to pages on a website. With the identification capabilities of a cookie, a website administrator would be able to distinguish between multiple hits by multiple users and multiple hits by a single user.
Perhaps the most prevalent use of cookies is database marketing. Information in cookies can be used to compile a database profile of internet use of a specific individual. The profile can include such information as sites visited, advertising banners “clicked”, and other user-specific data. This profile is then used to tailor promotions specific to individual users. For instance, an administrator of a gardening-related site can use cookies to track specific paths an individual travels through the website. If the cookies for that individual indicate an interest in exotic orchids, for example, the administrator can use this information to target advertising concerning greenhouse equipment to that individual. Such advertising may be in the form of interest-specific banners. The administrator can also use cookies to ensure that an individual does not receive the same advertisement repeatedly.
With their ability to gather a wide variety of information on individual internet use, cookies have been the subject of some concern regarding privacy issues. Although some early implementations of Java and JavaScript allowed access to user's hard drives, these security problems have been resolved, and are no longer an issue. An HTTP Cookie cannot be used to get data from a user's hard drive, or to obtain a user's e-mail address or other sensitive information stored on the user's computer without the user's permission. A server can only get data from the cookie it wrote to the cookie file. The server must be on the same domain from which the cookie was set.
While such security measures are effective in preventing unauthorized access to individual's hard drives, there are circumstances under which limited access to information voluntarily provided by a user can be desirable, or even beneficial to the user. In these situations, the applications utilizing variations of the client/server model are frequently employed to convey such information.
One example of such an application is MOPy™ Fish, developed by Global Beach for Hewlett-Packard Co. This application provides a “screen saver” that is a virtual aquarium, with an interactive goldfish. The program interacts with the printer drivers of the user's computer to tally the number of original pages printed from the computer. Users are awarded “MOPy™ (multiple original printing) points” for each original printed. These points can be redeemed at a website for “aphrodisiac fish food” which enhances the user's enjoyment of the program. Of course, the MOPy points not only encourage users to understand the uses of multiple original prints, but also give the website ad
Hewlett--Packard Company
Le Uyen
Metjahic Safet
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