System, method and program product for centrally managing agents

• US 20030212715A1
• Filed: 05/13/2002
• Published: 11/13/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 05/13/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bangel, Matthew J., Houston, William M., Martin, James A. Jr., Morin, Eric J., Filiberti, David M.
• Granted Patent: US 7,085,764 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/201
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/52 Program synchronisation; Mutual exclusion, e.g. by means of semaphores
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99952 Coherency, e.g. same view to multiple users

Abstract

A system, method and program product for centrally managing agents are provided. Specifically, under the present invention, master agents stored in a control database of a control system are scheduled to execute remote agents stored in remote databases of remote systems. Once executed by the master agents, the remote agents will implement functions thereto. By providing centralized management of agents in this manner, agent scheduling conflicts are prevented.

Claims

1. A system for centrally managing agents, comprising:

a control system having a control database;

a plurality of remote systems connected to the control system, wherein each of the plurality of remote systems has a remote database; and

a plurality of master agents in the control database, wherein the master agents are adapted to implement functions corresponding to the remote databases without causing agent scheduling conflicts.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the remote databases include remote agents, and wherein the master agents are adapted to interact with the remote agents according to predefined scheduling to implement the functions.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the control system further comprises:

a scheduling system for adapting the master agents to interact with the remote agents according to the predefined scheduling; and

a grouping system for grouping the master agents and the remote agents.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the master agents are adapted to interact with access control list rules to control access to the data within the remote databases.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the functions comprises cross-system replication of at least a portion of the data within one of the remote databases.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the functions comprises backing up the data within one of the remote databases.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the control system is selected from the group consisting of a server and a devoted client.

8. A system for centrally managing agents, comprising:

a control system having a control database;

a plurality of remote systems connected to the control system, wherein each of the plurality of remote systems has a remote database that includes a remote agent; and

a plurality of master agents in the control database, wherein the master agents are scheduled to communicate with the remote agents to implement processing of data within the remote databases.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the control system comprises:

a scheduling system for scheduling the master agents to interact with the remote agents; and

a grouping system for grouping the master agents and the remote agents.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the grouping system allows a plurality of remote agents to be called by a single master agent.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the master agents are further scheduled to interact with access control list rules to control access to the data within the remote databases.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the processing of data comprises cross-system replication of at least a portion of the data within one of the remote databases.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the processing of data comprises backing up the data within one of the remote databases.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein the control system is selected from the group consisting of a server and a devoted client.

15. A system for centrally managing agents, comprising:

a control database having a plurality of master agents;

a scheduling system for scheduling the master agents to communicate with remote agents stored in remote databases to implement functions corresponding to the remote agents; and

a grouping system for grouping the master agents and the remote agents.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising an agent programming system for programming the master agents to communicate with particular remote agents.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the master agents are scheduled to interact with access control list rules to control access to the data within the remote databases.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein at least one of the functions comprises cross-system replication of at least a portion of the data within one of the remote databases.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein at least one of the functions comprises backing up the data within one of the remote databases.

20. A method for centrally managing agents, comprising:

providing a control system having a control database of master agents;

providing a plurality of remote systems connected to the control system, wherein each remote system includes a remote database, and wherein each remote database includes a remote agent; and

scheduling the master agents to communicate with the remote agents to implement functions corresponding to the remote agents without causing agent scheduling conflicts.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising grouping the master agents and the remote agents.

22. The method of claim 20, further comprising programming the master agents to communicate with particular remote agents.

23. The method of claim 20, wherein the scheduling step comprises scheduling the master agents to interact with access control list rules to control access to the data stored within in the remote databases.

24. The method of claim 20, wherein at least one of the functions comprises cross-system replication of at least a portion of the data within one of the remote databases.

25. The method of claim 20, wherein at least one of the functions comprises backing up the data within one of the remote databases.

26. A program product stored on a recordable medium for scheduling master agents of a control system to communicate with remote agents of remote systems connected to the control system, which when executed, comprises:

program code for scheduling the master agents to communicate with the remote agents to implement processing of data within remote databases; and

program code for grouping the master agents and the remote agents.

27. The program product of claim 26, further comprising program code for programming the master agents to communicate with particular remote agents.

28. The program product of claim 26, further comprising program code for scheduling the master agents to interact with access control list rules to control access to the data within in the remote databases.

29. The program product of claim 26, wherein the processing of data comprises cross-system replication of at least a portion of the data within one of the remote databases.

30. The program product of claim 26, wherein the processing of data comprises backing up the data within one of the remote databases.