WEB SERVER WITH UNIQUE IDENTIFICATION OF LINKED OBJECTS

• US 20020103883A1
• Filed: 06/19/1998
• Published: 08/01/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/1997
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: ESTRADA, JULIO, ESTRADA, MIGUEL, HAVERSTOCK, PAUL
• Granted Patent: US 6,449,640 B1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/972 Access to data in other repository systems, e.g. legacy data or dynamic Web page generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/151 Transformation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

A system for enabling access to non-HTML objects from a web browser. The system includes a database for storing non-HTML objects. A system user requests a non-HTML object from a database using a web browser. The web browser transmits the request to a server via a HTTP server and module. The server locates and retrieves the document requested. The module translates the document to a format supported by the web browser. The HTTP server communicates the translated object to the web browser over a network. The web browser then presents the translated object to the system user. The system also provides documents with a unique identifier. Once a unique identifier is assigned to a document, the system refers to the document by the unique identifier.

Claims

1. A client/server system enabling browser access to non-HTML objects with automatically assigned unique identifiers comprising:

a web server;

at least one non-HTML database associated with the web server for storing at least non-HTML objects, said objects having a name;

a client comprising a browser for accessing the non-HTML objects by submitting requests to the server;

wherein said non-HTML objects are assigned a unique identifier by said server, said unique identifier being something other than the name of the object;

wherein the web server, upon receipt of a request from the browser, retrieves the requested object by its unique identifier.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the object may be renamed, but the unique identifier does not change.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the at least one databases comprises an index of objects within the database, said index being based on the unique identifiers.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the index is automatically updated when an object is added, created or modified.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein a non-HTML object may be linked to another object by referencing the unique identifier rather than the object name.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein a non-HTML object may be linked to another object by referencing the unique identifier rather than the object name.

6. A client/server system enabling browser access to non-HTML objects with automatically assigned unique identifiers comprising:

web server means;

at least one non-HTML database means associated with the web server means for storing at least non-HTML objects, said objects having a name;

client means comprising a browser for accessing the non-HTML objects by submitting requests to the web server means server;

wherein said non-HTML objects are assigned a unique identifier by said web server means, said unique identifier being something other than the name of the object;

wherein the web server means, upon receipt of a request from the browser, retrieves the requested object by its unique identifier.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein the object may be renamed, but the unique identifier does not change.

8. The system of claim 6 wherein the at least one database means comprises an index of objects within the database, said index being based on the unique identifiers.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the index is automatically updated when an object is added, created or modified.

11. In a client/server system comprising a web server, at least one non-HTML database associated with the web server for storing at least non-HTML objects, said objects having a name, and a client comprising a browser for accessing the non-HTML objects by submitting requests to the web server, a method enabling browser access to non-HTML objects with automatically assigned unique identifiers comprising the steps of:

said web server assigning a unique identifier to said object, said unique identifier being something other than the name of the object;

said web server, upon receipt of a request from the browser, retrieving the requested object by its unique identifier.

12. A computer useable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for assigning a unique identifier to non-HTML objects, the computer readable program code in a computer useable medium comprising:

computer readable program code for causing a computer to assign a unique identifier to one or more non-HTML objects when the one or more non-HTML objects are created;

computer readable program code for causing a computer to store one or more non-HTML in one or more databases;

computer readable program code for enabling a request to be received for the one or more non-HTML objects from a browser; and

computer readable program code for causing the web server to retrieve the one or more requested non-HTML objects based on the unique identifier.