Providing clients with services that retrieve data from data...

Details Providing clients with services that retrieve data from data... Providing clients with services that retrieve data from data...

1999-12-06

2004-11-30

Feild, Joseph (Department: 2176)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput

Computer conferencing

Priority based messaging

C709S223000, C709S246000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C715S252000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06826597

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to providing services to clients and, more specifically, to providing clients with services that retrieve data from data sources that do not necessarily support the format required by the clients.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The World Wide Web includes a network of servers on the Internet, each of which is associated with one or more HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) pages. The HTML pages associated with a server provide information and hypertext links to other documents on that and (usually) other servers. Servers communicate with clients by using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The servers listen for requests from clients for their HTML pages, and are therefore often referred to as “listeners”.
Users of the World Wide Web use a client program, referred to as a browser, to request, decode and display information from listeners. When the user of a browser selects a link on an HTML page, the browser that is displaying the page sends a request over the Internet to the listener associated with the Universal Resource Locator (URL) specified in the link. In response to the request, the listener transmits the requested information to the browser that issued the request. The browser receives the information, presents the received information to the user, and awaits the next user request.
Traditionally, the information stored on listeners is in the form of static HTML pages. Static HTML pages are created and stored at the listener prior to a request from a web browser. In response to a request, a static HTML page is merely read from storage and transmitted to the requesting browser. Currently, there is a trend to develop listeners that respond to browser requests by performing dynamic operations. For example, a listener may respond to a request by issuing a query to a database, dynamically constructing a web page containing the results of the query, and transmitting the dynamically constructed HTML page to the requesting browser.
Another trend is to expand Internet access to devices other than conventional computer systems. For example, wireless phones have been developed that include embedded web browsers. Due to size and cost constraints, the “micro browsers” contained in these devices have very limited functionality relative to the browsers that have been developed for full-fledged computer systems. However, devices with embedded micro browsers are usable in circumstances under which using a conventional computer system is impractical. In addition to having an embedded micro browser, certain wireless phones support a two-way paging protocol known as Short Message Stimulator (SMS). Using SMS, an SMS-enabled phone may send a text message to another SMS-enabled phone.
A typical system in which web-enabled, SMS-enabled phones may be used is illustrated in FIG.
1
. Referring to
FIG. 1
, system
100
includes a wireless phone
102
connected to a network
104
though a wireless communication medium. Network
104
may be, for example, a global digital network such as the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network. SMS messages from the phone
102
may be sent through the network
106
to a gateway
106
that includes a translator
112
. Gateway
106
may be, for example, a NAMP server, available from Nokia, that is configured to translate SMS messages to HTTP messages that can be sent over an IP network. In the illustrated embodiment, gateway
106
translates SMS messages from phone
102
and transmits them using HTTP over the Internet
108
to a web server
110
.
In response to the HTTP request from gateway
106
, web server
110
sends a web page back over the Internet
108
to gateway
106
. Gateway
106
converts the web page to an SMS message and sends it to phone
102
through network
104
. Unfortunately, due to the limited capabilities of phone
102
, the process of intelligently converting the web page into something that can be delivered to the phone
102
can be extremely difficult.
According to one approach, gateway
106
includes filtering logic that is programmed with web-page-specific filtering rules. Such a filtering rule may indicate, for example, that text that is to be included in the SMS message sent back to the phone
102
is to be obtained by extracting the 53 characters that follow a particular sequence of tags within the web page associated with the rule. The rule for a different web page could specify completely different criteria for located and extracting text. Even for the same web page, a particular filtering rule may cease to yield the desired result if the content or format of the web page changes. Consequently, using the web-page-specific filtering rule approach places an enormous burden on the manager of gateway
106
to design the various filter rules and to keep them up to date for all pages that will be requested through gateway
106
.
In an alternate approach, the filtering functionality is moved outside of gateway
106
into a filtering box that is placed between the gateway
106
and the Internet
108
. The gateway
106
continues to believe that it is interacting with the web servers over the Internet
108
, and continues to translate between HTTP and SMS. However, all HTTP traffic sent to or sent from gateway
106
actually passes through the filtering box. The filtering rules applied by the filtering box may be specified by users themselves. Thus, the filtering box may filter the same web page differently for different phone users based on how those phone users have designed their filters. While this approach reduces the managerial burden of the gateway administrator, it largely shifts that burden to the users themselves. Further, it only allows the phones to communicate with one type of data source: HTTP servers. Other information sources, such as database systems, are not made accessible to phone
102
by the gateway
106
.
Based on the foregoing, it is clearly desirable to improve the techniques by which users of less-conventional clients gain access to the World Wide Web. It is further desirable to provide techniques that allow such clients to conveniently access other sources of information.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A method and system are provided for allowing clients to retrieve data from data sources that do not necessarily support the same protocols and formats as the clients. According to one aspect of the invention, a pre-processor responds to the service requests of clients by generating request objects. In one embodiment, the request objects are XML-structured documents with unresolved links to the data sources that have information required by the clients. An XML processor resolves the links by issuing requests through one or more gateways. The gateways convert the responses received from the data sources into XML, which the XML processor uses to create XML composite response documents. A post-processor filters the XML response documents, and applies XSL stylesheets to transform the XML composite response documents into client-specific responses that conform to the format required by the clients. The client-specific responses are then sent to the clients.


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