Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-17
2001-07-17
Coulter, Kenneth R. (Department: 2154)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C345S215000, C709S220000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06263346
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to the configuration of networks, and particularly to local area networks of a primary server computer controlling a plurality of client computers applicable to small businesses, which are particularly simple to configure and use.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Computers and their application programs are used in all aspects of business, industry and academic endeavors. In recent years, there has been a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the Internet. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all aspects of human productivity in the industrialized world requires human/computer interaction. The computer industry has been a force for bringing about great increases in business and industrial productivity. Almost every week seems to bring computer industry advances which promise even further increases in productivity. These advances offer to drive down business and industry costs and increase efficiency in addition to increasing productivity. In addition, the cost of “computer power” continues to drop as a result of rapid advances in computer related technologies.
Despite all of these advantages, there still remains great resistance in all industries and business fields to new computer systems and significant system upgrades which offer much in productivity increases. This resistance results from past experience which equates installing new computer systems or significant upgrades in existing systems with large amounts of down time, during which the business, manufacturing facility or individual worker functions are inoperative or operate at diminished levels. When a business or production facility is trying to decide whether to install a new computer system the concern about down time, the possible loss of business, as well as stress on the workers involved, very often outweighs the cost of the installation in influencing the decision. The concern about business and production delays resulting from installation has become so great that fewer and fewer small businesses are trying to make system and program changes on their own. This concern is even greater when the business is considering the installation of a computer network. While many businesses would most likely be much more productive if their computers were interconnected with each other, the thought of a network may be very frightening to many small businesses without too much computer experience. They are likely to consider the concepts to be learned and the technology required to connect two or more computers in a network as too complex, time consuming or error prone to be attempted by the average small business user or owner.
There is a substantial challenge in the installation of computer network systems for small businesses. In this marketplace we are dealing with a group whose available time is being stressed to its limits by the pressures of current economic systems. Even though the network computer systems procurable by these business people may offer eventual salvation to their other business stresses, the prospect of a new computer installation is often quite ominous to them.
The above-referenced copending applications: “Configuring Computer Network Operations Based Upon the Correlation of a Sequence of Interactive Display User Entries Apparently Unrelated to Computer Operations”, Casey, Dean and Rodriguez and “Simplified Setting Up of a Network of a Server Computer Preloaded With All Computer Programs Required by a Group of Client Computers to be Connected Into Network”, Casey, Dean and Rodriguez, provide computer networks which are very easy to install, operate and upgrade. The networks have a primary server computer on which substantially all software, including operating systems to be used by client computers in the network, is loaded into and maintained in the server computer storage. This software is then allocated to the client computers according to user needs and distributed to the client computers when called for by particular users and then returned to the server computer where the software is stored. The client computers in the networks have minimal storage capacity as little is stored at the client computers. In fact, the client computers do not need their own hard disk drives. Using conventional storage expedients, such networking systems would be expected to offer little flexibility to the users of the client computers in the configuring of their own individualized graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to the operating systems and to the application programs being provided to them from the server computer. Considering the substantial quantities of storage capacity required by the graphical image data in the screen panels in such interfaces, they would be expected to consume substantial portions of storage capacity of the server computer which is primarily in its hard disk drive. This, in turn, could limit the number of client computers that a server could support and/or limit the number of application programs available for allocation to clients by the server computer. Thus, it might be expected that the trade off for an easy to install and configure local network would be very little flexibility in the individualizing of the GUIs. However, part of the ease of use of computer operations would be the ability of users to design individualized interfaces with which the users would feel comfortable. Thus, there is a need to provide users with the flexibility to tailor user interfaces despite the limited storage capacity in the server.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a solution to the above problems by providing a network for small businesses which is easy to install, configure and operate and still provides users of the client computers in the network with the same degree of flexibility in configuring graphic user interfaces to operating systems and application programs as do present stand alone personal computers. All of the software to be used by the client computers, operating systems and application programs, are stored on the network server computer. Thus, the key to the present invention is in the system for storing the data representative of the variety of graphic user interfaces customized by the users so that a minimum of the server's storage capacity is used.
The graphical user interfaces to the operating systems and application programs are customized in the conventional manner by the users of the client computers, usually at the client computer through a conventional interactive display. In the customization of a program, the data representative of an initial user interface is stored. This may be the default interface provided by the particular application program or operating system, or it may be an interface customized at the network level for a particular group or department of users. The initial interface may be one previously customized by the user who is now making changes in his GUIs. Now the system provides means for determining the differences between said subsequent user customized interface and said initial user interface, means for storing data representative of the differences of said subsequent interface from said initial interface and means for displaying said subsequent user interface by modifying the data representative of said initial interface with the data representative of said differences. This results in a significant savings of storage capacity since only the initial interfaces need to be fully stored; each customized interface requires only stored data representative of the changes from the initial interface.
The data representative of the initial interfaces and the changes as a result of customization are stored in the server computer, which also controls the combination of this data to provide the customized GUIs. The interfaces are correlated with the user IDs. Thus, there are means in the server c
Coulter Kenneth R.
Henkler Richard A.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Kraft J. B.
Leeuwen Leslie A. Van
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