Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1998-05-11
2001-01-16
Homere, Jean R. (Department: 2177)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000, C709S203000, C709S219000, C709S223000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06175832
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is generally related to the field of computer network performance enhancement, and particularly to a method, system and program product for providing a network interface to a data repository. More specifically, the present invention enables the fulfillment of remote requests for data from a central repository and the provision of a locally executing interactive graphical display for the requested data at a requesting networked computer system.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The Internet is a decentralized network of computers that can communicate with one another via a transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP). Although the Internet has its origins in a network created by Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) in the 1960's, it has only recently become a worldwide communication medium. To a large extent, the explosive growth in use of the Internet is due to the development in the early 1990's of the worldwide Web (WWW), which is one of several service facilities provided on the Internet. Other facilities include a variety of communication services such as electronic mail, telnet, usenet newsgroups, internet relay chat (IRC),a variety of information retrieval services such as FTP (file transfer protocol) and Gopher. The WWW is a client-server based facility that includes a number of servers (computers connected to the Internet) on which Web pages or files reside, as well as clients (Web browsers) which interface the users with the Web pages. Specifically, Web browsers and software applications such as Communicator (trademark of Netscape Communication Corporation) send a request over the WWW to a server requesting a web page identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which notes both the server where the Web page resides and the file or files on the server which makes up the Web page. The server then sends a copy of the requested file(s) to the Web browser, which in turn displays the Web page to the user.
The Web pages on the WWW may be hyper-media documents written in a standardized language called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). A typical Web page includes text together with embedded formatting commands, referred to as tags, which can be used to control font size, font style and the like. A Web browser parses the HTML script in order to display the text in accordance with the specified format.
The widely distributed nature of the Internet as well as other currently popular distributed computing environments such as intranets (scaled versions of the Internet providing communications bounded by a firewall typically within a business entity) has enabled the provision of information or content to an ever broadening user-base. Concomitantly, the need has developed for managing this extensive user connectivity. In particular, it has been increasingly difficult for content providers to provide servers having the connectivity capacity required to fulfill concurrent requests from numerous client computers in a reasonable time period. Additionally, graphical content, while extremely powerful in its ability to convey information to a client, typically comprises large amounts of data and the communication of this data presents challenges with respect to processor resource at the server.
Often the information sought by clients in a distributed computing environment resides in restricted or secured databases which may require special access codes or special seat licenses for access to the data therein. Content providers have been challenged to provide controlled and authenticated access to these secure repositories in such a manner as to be transparent to the client computer while still ensuring the security of the data therein.
Connectivity management in a distributed computing environment is often more important than the quality of the information provided by the server owner. Many servers owners have lost clients based upon their failure to address such issues.
Historically such connectivity and processor resource issues have been addressed by augmenting the base hardware at the server owner's location. Server owners are continually upgrading their computer systems to ensure that clients are provided with timely access to meaningful content. Of course this solution does not ensure complete content access and requires perpetual and expanding expenditures on the part of the server owner. Moreover, this solution fails to address problems created by the need to occasionally provide event-based server sites which are in heavy client demand such as the web-based tracking of the Olympic games or the recent Mars exploration expedition by NASA. Security authentication management has been treated in a number of different ways including, the use encryption techniques which may require additional software for the client and the use of secure passwords for access to particular pieces of information, however the maintenance of these secure systems and passwords has varied widely. For example, in some “secure” Web-sites the user's password which gives a client the ability to access private data is stored in a local file on a client's computer (also referred to as a “cookie”). This file may be copied from the clients computer thereby enabling third parties to access the secure information.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The foregoing problems and shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and further advantageous features are provided by the present invention wherein is taught a method, apparatus and program product for facilitating the transfer of data between a requesting computer and data repository over a computer network.
In accordance with the present invention an interface is provided over the network to a requesting computer from a front-end server computer via a network communication session. The interface, which in a preferred embodiment is provided to the requesting computer in the form of a self-executing packet of Java code, is interpreted via a web browser application at the requesting computer to provide interface applets for generating requests from the requesting computer to the data repository to access the data stored therein.
Requests are passed via a temporary data link established between the requesting computer and a software-based bridge element which is continuously logically coupled to the data repository via a second network communication session. The temporary data link is established upon the issuance of the requests from the requesting computer. The bridge responds to these requests by accessing the requested data from the repository and sending the requested data to the requesting computer system.
In an embodiment of the invention the interface applets include a graphical user interface including tabular and graphical representations. Through the graphical user interface a user of the requesting computer system generates the requests for the stored data and through the interface the retrieved data is displayed to the user.
In a further embodiment of the invention the communication session established between the front-end server and the requesting computer system performs an authentication operation prior to sending the interface to the requesting computer system. In yet a further embodiment, receipt of the interface authorizes the requesting computer system to access the stored data through the bridge element.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the network communication session established between the front-end server system and the requesting computer is terminated upon the provision of the interface to the requesting computer, thereby freeing the front-end server system to serve other requesting computers.
In accordance with yet a further feature of the present invention multiple requesting computers each provided with an interface from the front-end server may request data from the repository. In such an embodiment, corresponding data links are established between the bridge element and each of the one or more requesting computers. The continuous second communication se
Luzzi Joseph
Zhu Gengxin
Ehrlich Marc A.
Gonzalez Floyd A.
Homere Jean R.
International Business Machines - Corporation
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