Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Distributed data processing – Client/server
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-08
2001-02-06
Rinehart, Mark (Department: 2756)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Distributed data processing
Client/server
C709S204000, C709S205000, C709S223000, C709S224000, C709S217000, C709S219000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06185600
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to the field of networked computer systems, and more particularly to a system and method for viewing network event data generated by a variety of different product specific applications via a standard internet browser.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Networked computer systems provide a convenient method for sharing data and facilitating distributed processing among multiple, and often remote, users and systems. With the increasing speed of technology, new products and systems are entering the market with an ever-increasing pace. To strike a balance between the desire to obtain the latest technological functionality available against market requirements to keep costs down, many industries maintain heterogeneous networks. A heterogeneous network is a network that is diverse across its network processing nodes in either or all of its system hardware, operating systems, and applications.
Network systems are generally monitored and maintained by system administrators. System administrators learn the state of the network system by being notified of certain system events. Typically, operating systems and certain applications executing on a network processing node store system event data which may be of interest to the system administrator in a product specific event repository. The event repository may be implemented as an ASCII error log, or may be a more sophisticated database upon which a product specific event browser is employed to view and sort the system event data.
Present day product specific event browsers are typically available from vendors of a given operating system or application. In order to view the event data stored in a given product's event repository, a user must use the vendor's product specific event browser. This may be inconvenient on a heterogeneous platform where the system administrator is running on a remote system under a different platform. Accordingly, a need exists for a universal event browser which generates a viewable system events window with desired filtering capability from a variety of different back-end products, including operating systems and applications.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a universal event browser which allows users to view and potentially manipulate stored network and system event data remotely via a local internet browser. According to the invention, a user may access event data generated by any number of different product specific applications using a single universal event browser.
According to the invention, an architecture is defined which isolates generic user interface functionality from the implementation of each product specific application as much as possible. Under the architecture defined by the invention, generic graphical user interface (GUI) tasks, which are not product specific, are implemented in a universal user interface generator. Data collection tasks, which are product specific since each product specific application maintains a separate and different event data store, are implemented in independent product specific interfaces defined for each product specific application. The architecture described in conjunction with the structure of the illustrative embodiments presented herein allows a host of different product specific applications to be supported by a universal event browser by providing a single front-end universal user interface generator which communicates with the user via the client's local internet browser, and a product specific interface for each product specific application (or collection of applications) which perform the actual event retrieval and communicate with the universal user interface generator via a well-defined communications protocol. This architecture complies with the database retrieval requirements of each product specific application using a minimal amount of coding; no duplicated code is required since the universal user interface generator interacts equally well with all of the product specific interfaces.
A generic specification language is also provided which allows the specific display and filtering parameters to be defined for the user's display. The vendor or developer of each product specific application defines the format of its own product specific display window by specifying the desired window and filtering parameters using the generic specification language in a product specific specification file. When a universal event browser session is launched for viewing and browsing event data generated by a product specific application, its corresponding product specific specification file is read by the universal user interface generator to determine the product specific elements of the display.
The universal event browser of the invention allows a single set of generic GUI functional applications (packaged within the universal user interface generator) to be developed and reused for multiple product specific event browsing requirements. In addition, because the various technologies specific to the generic GUI functions and to the product specific data collection functions (packaged in independent product specific interfaces) are separated, the present invention allows modifications to be made to the implementations of either set of functional applications without requiring modifications to the other set.
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Spence Kurt E.
Yunker John W.
Hewlett--Packard Company
Rinehart Mark
Romero Almari
LandOfFree
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