Multiplex communications – Communication techniques for information carried in plural... – Adaptive
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-30
2001-10-30
Nguyen, Chau (Department: 2663)
Multiplex communications
Communication techniques for information carried in plural...
Adaptive
Reexamination Certificate
active
06310888
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to systems and methods for communicating data. More particularly, this invention relates to systems and methods for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes, in which data are converted from a source format to a standard format, the data are routed from the source process to the one or more destination processes, the data are converted from the standard format to a destination format for each destination process, and receipt of the data is verified at each destination process.
Integrated processing architectures in which a variety of processing systems communicate with each other over a communication network are widely used in commerce. Because of the different communication requirements of each processing system in such architectures, it is frequently necessary to incorporate multiple translation processes into each transmitting or receiving processing system to translate outgoing or incoming data. This necessity becomes particularly burdensome as the variety of source transmission formats or destination transmission formats increases for any processing system. For example, in an architecture comprising four format-unique processing systems A, B, C, and D in which A transmits data to all of B, C, and D, and D receives data from all of A, B, and C, both A and D would need to have three translators each to respectively convert the transmissions to and from the necessary formats.
Another disadvantage with these architectures is that changing, adding, and/or removing sources and/or destinations for data transmissions is difficult because the application processes that generate each copy of the transmissions generated and that perform the corresponding translations, must be modified. These modifications may be particularly problematic to the extent that they introduce potential flaws into the application processes and that they require the modified applications to be taken off-line while being altered.
A further disadvantage with these architectures is that each architecture is usually unique from enterprise to enterprise because of the unique needs and desires of the enterprises, and, therefore, each architecture must be custom built at significant expense in both time and money. For example, in the architecture comprising processing systems A, B, C, and D used as an example above, each processing system would have to be custom built to incorporate the required translators for each of the other systems. Likewise, in another similar architecture comprising processing systems A, B, C, D, and E, each processing system would also have to be custom built to incorporate the required translators for each of the other systems although only one additional system (i.e., system E) makes this architecture different from the first architecture.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to be able to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes which do not require a separate translator on each source or destination processing system for each data format type to be transmitted or received, respectively.
It would be also desirable to be able to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes which do not require an application process to be modified to change, add, or remove a source or destination of a data transmission.
It would be further desirable to be able to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes which do not require an application process to be taken off-line to change, add, or remove a source or destination of a data transmission.
It would be still further desirable to be able to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes that can be implemented in virtually any enterprise architecture without requiring that each processing system of the architecture be custom built.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes which do not require a separate translator on each source or destination processing system for each data format type to be transmitted or received, respectively.
It is another object of this invention to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes which do not require an application process to be modified to change, add, or remove a source or destination of a data transmission.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes which do not require an application process to be taken off-line to change, add, or remove a source or destination of a data transmission.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a system and method for communicating data between a source process and one or more destination processes that can be implemented in virtually any enterprise architecture without requiring that each processing system of the architecture be custom built.
In accordance with the present invention, a system and method for communicating data between a source application process and one or more destination application processes, which achieve these and other objects, are provided. More particularly, the system and method of the present invention perform uniform conversion and routing functions which require only a single conversion of all outbound data transmissions regardless of the variety of data destinations and only a single conversion of all inbound data transmissions regardless of the variety of data sources. Through these function, the system and method of the present invention enable changes, additions, and deletions of sources and destinations of data transmissions to be made without modification of a source or destination application process and without taking a source or destination application process off-line. Also, by using uniform conversion and routing functions, this system and method may be implemented in virtually any enterprise architecture without requiring that each processing system of the architecture be custom built.
These conversion and routing functions are performed by first receiving, in a source format and from a source application, data to be transmitted. These data are then converted from the source format to a standard format. Next, one or more destination addresses are identified based upon a transaction type corresponding to the data to be transmitted and/or the address of the source application. After identifying the one or more destination addresses, a copy of the data is then transmitted to each. Upon receipt of each copy of the data at the corresponding destination, the data are then converted from the standard format to a destination format. Lastly, these converted data are passed to a corresponding destination process.
In preferred embodiments of the system and method of the present invention, a receipt acknowledgment function is also performed. This function produces a receipt acknowledgment when transmitted data are received at a destination process. If this acknowledgment is not received at a source process prior to the occurrence of a given number of other transmission attempts or a given time period, an error notification will be generated. This error notification may then trigger an automated process that handles the error or alert a user to the error condition so that manual handling of the error can be accomplished.
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Boakye Alexander O.
Byrne Matthew T.
Fish & Neave
Ingerman Jeffrey H.
iWork Software, LLC
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