Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Multicomputer data transferring via shared memory
Reexamination Certificate
2000-11-02
2004-11-30
Alam, Hosain (Department: 2155)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Multicomputer data transferring via shared memory
C704S203000, C704S214000, C704S200000, C704S205000, C704S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06826600
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention generally relates to mechanisms and techniques for managing objects in a client-server computing system environment, and more particularly, to systems and techniques which allow for the creation and management of uniquely identified objects in such an environment.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The rise in popularity of computer networks such as the Internet has led software application developers to develop complex software applications which interact between different computer systems over the network. One example of such a software application is collaboration software which allows respective users of two or more computer systems to exchange information during a collaboration session. In a collaboration session, if a user on one computer system enters information or manipulates an image on that user's computer display, the collaboration software conveys such information or image manipulations to recipient computer systems under control of other participants (i.e., other users) involved in the collaboration session. The recipient computer systems receive the information or image manipulations and attempt to duplicate or recreate the information or image manipulations on the computer display(s) of the recipient computer systems for viewing by the participants controlling such computer systems. In this manner, actions taken by one participant involved in the collaboration session can be witnessed by other participants in the collaboration session.
Collaboration software systems such as the example discussed above are often designed based on a client/server software design model. Software designer refer to the collaboration software that performs on the participant or user computer systems as client collaboration software, while other collaboration software that resides and performs within a collaboration adapter or collaboration server computer system to handle distribution of collaboration information between the respective user computer systems involved in the collaboration session is called server collaboration software.
Generally, client/server software systems such as collaboration systems support the exchange of information between a client and a server using some type of protocol or handshaking process which passes or transfers data structures between the client and server software components. Many implementations of client/server software systems use an object oriented software model or architecture which allows the client and server software to exchange data as a series of one or more objects. An object might, for instance, encapsulate information such as a size, position, direction of movement and so forth about a particular entity such as a graphic that is related to the collaboration session. Object oriented client/server software systems are not limited to collaborations systems, though collaboration systems serve as a suitable example for discussing the operations of object oriented client/server software systems.
By way of example, consider the operation of an object oriented client server collaboration software system that operates to provide a collaboration session between multiple participant users. Suppose one user on a user computer system involved in the collaboration session creates a graphic or image on the display of his or her user computer system. The client collaboration software on that user's computer system will create a graphic object for that graphic and will assign an object identification to the graphic object. The graphic object might define, perhaps, the size, shape and position of the graphic on the display of the user computer system. After creation of the graphic object, the client collaboration software will then provide a copy of the graphic object to the server collaboration software that operates on the collaboration server computer system (also called a collaboration adapter). The server collaboration software will receive the graphic object and will place the graphic object in an object database with other objects possibly created by other client computer systems involved in the collaboration session. The server collaboration software periodically distributes the objects (e.g., the graphic object) in the object database to the client computer systems that are participating in the collaboration session so that the client collaboration software can display or otherwise operate on the set of objects related to the collaboration session.
In this manner, a client can create objects and provide the objects to the server and the server can distribute objects created by clients to other clients such that each client receives a copy of the objects related to the collaboration session. The server computer system operating the server collaboration software thus operates as a central repository for all objects created and identified by clients during the collaboration session. Should client collaboration software operating on another client computer system join a collaboration session already in progress, the server collaboration software can distribute the current set of objects related to the collaboration session to the client collaboration software on the client computer system such that the new participant user can immediately come up to speed and join in with the other participants in the collaboration session.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Conventional object oriented client/server software systems that provide object creation and management techniques suffer from a number of deficiencies. Most notably, conventional object oriented client/server software systems do not include a mechanism that ensures or guarantees uniqueness of shared objects in such systems.
By way of example, consider the object oriented client/server collaboration software system discussed above. In such a system, the client software (i.e. client collaboration software in this example) creates objects and assigns properties to the objects including the individual object identification for that object. The client software might generate the object identification for a particular object based on an algorithm that ensures that the object identification is unique within that client. However, once the client collaboration software forwards objects which it creates in this manner to the server collaboration software which maintains the objects in the object repository (e.g., an object database), there is no guarantee that the object identifications created by the client will be unique in relation to all other objects created by all other clients involved in collaboration session. It may be the case, for example, that a second client generates a second object containing the same object identification as the first object created by the first client. When the second client transfers the second object to the collaboration server for placement into the object database, the first and second objects will each contain the same object identification. This may cause the server collaboration software to be confused as to which object is to be obtained, manipulated or otherwise operate upon when a client refers to the object identification shared by two or more objects in the object database.
Conventional client/server object management techniques also provide insufficient mechanisms for a client to determine that a server accurately creates and manages the objects which a client provides to the server. For instance, in conventional collaboration systems, when the client collaboration software creates a number of objects, each containing a client object identification, and then provide the client objects to the server for distribution to other clients in a collaboration session, the client performs little if any verification processing to verify that the server collaboration software properly receives and manages the objects created by the client. This problem is associated in part to the aforementioned problem in which to objects might potentially share the same object identification in a conventional collaboration system. That is, if a
Alam Hosain
Bruckart Ben
Chapin & Huang LLC
Chapin, Esq. Barry W.
Cisco Technology Inc.
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