Icon marshalling via web services

• US 20040088377A1
• Filed: 11/05/2002
• Published: 05/06/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 11/05/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Henriquez, Alberto
• Granted Patent: US 7,254,786 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology for transmitting icon information from a remote system to a local system. The icon information is extracted from an application residing on the remote system. The icon information is then encoded and stored until it is requested by the remote system. When the application is remotely accessed by the local system, the icon information is pushed to the local system. The local system decodes the information and displays the icon to a user. The icon is displayed such that the application appears to reside on the local system, rather than the remote system, where it actually resides.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates remote computer access, comprising:

a remote computing system having an application residing thereon; and

a transmit component that transmits an icon resources group associated with the application to a local computing system.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the transmit component transmits the encoded icon information via XML.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the transmit component transmits the encoded icon information via SOAP-XML.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein a user interface is generated at the remote computing system for the at least one application and is virtualized at the local computing system via a dynamically generated interface.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the virtualization of the at least one application includes programmatic data and user interface information.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein an icon is rendered from the icon resources group for the application at the local computing system to create an appearance as if the application were resident at the local computing system.

7. The system of claim 1, the transmit component residing at a second remote computing system.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the icon resources group contains all the iconic information necessary to render an icon associated with the application at the local computing system.

9. The system of claim 1 employing deterministic policies in connection with transmitting iconic data.

10. The system of claim 9 inferring a desired level of iconic information to be transmitted to the local computing system.

11. The system of claim 1 comprising an extract component that extracts icon information from the application.

12. The system of claim 11 comprising an encode component that encode the extracted icon information.

13. The system of claim 12, the encode component employing at least one of the following encoding protocols:

(1) uuencode, (2) BinHex, (3) MIME and (4) Wincode.

14. A system for extracting and encoding icon information, comprising:

a locate component to locate at least one icon resource group from at least one application residing on a remote system;

an extract component to extract the at least one icon resource group from the at least one application; and

an encode component to encode the at least one extracted icon resource group.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one extracted icon resource group includes icons associated with the at least one application.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the encode component employs uuencoding to encode the at least one extracted icon resource group.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one extracted icon resource group is encoded into an .ico file format.

18. The system of claim 14, further comprising a storage component to store the encoded icon information.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the encoded icon information includes a 32×

32 icon image.

20. The system of claim 14, wherein the encoded icon information includes a 64×

64 icon image.

21. The system of claim 14, wherein the encoded icon information includes a plurality of different icon displays, a plurality of different icon formats, and a plurality of different icon resolutions.

22. A system for receiving icon information comprising:

a receive component to receive encoded icon information from a remote system, wherein the encoded icon information is associated with at least one application residing on the remote system;

a decode component to decode the encoded icon information; and

a display component to display at least one icon generated from the icon information such that it appears that the at least one application resides on a local system.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the at least one icon is displayed as a 32×

32 icon image.

24. The system of claim 22, wherein the at least one icon is displayed as a 64×

64 icon image.

25. The system of claim 22, wherein the encoded icon information is received via web services.

26. A method for extracting and encoding icon information comprising:

identifying an icon resource group in at least one application;

extracting the icon resource group from the at least one application; and

encoding the icon resource group into an icon format.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein different icon displays, sizes, and resolutions are extracted from the at least one application for rendering of an icon at a local computer via a remote access protocol.

28. The method of claim 26, wherein the icon resource group is encoded into an .ico file format.

29. The method of claim 26, wherein the icon resource group is uuencoded.

30. The method of claim 29, further comprising packaging the encoded icon resource group into an XML document.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising storing the XML document in a database.

32. A method for transmitting icon information comprising:

encoding icon information associated with at least one application residing on a remote system;

determining when the encoded icon information has been requested by a local system; and

transmitting the encoded icon information over a communications channel to the requesting local system, the transmitting being performed via at least one of;

web services or SOAP-XML.

33. The method of claim 32 further comprising:

receiving the encoded icon information from the remote system;

decoding the encoded icon information, wherein the icon information is uudecoded; and

streaming the decoded icon information into a file.

34. The method of claim 33, further comprising reading the file and determining whether an icon replacement exists for the at least one application.

35. The method of claim 34, further comprising selecting a best icon file, wherein the best icon file is the file with a highest icon resolution, icon size, and icon color data.

36. A remote access computing system comprising:

means for extracting icon information from at least one application residing on a remote system;

means for transmitting the icon information associated with the at least one application to a local system;

means for generating at least one icon from the icon information; and

means for displaying the at least one icon on a display of the local system such that it appears as if the at least one application resides on the local system.

37. A data packet transmitted between two or more computer components that facilitates icon marshalling, the data packet comprising:

icon information associated with at least one application, the icon information comprising a plurality of icon formats.

38. A computer readable medium storing computer executable components of a remote system, comprising:

a locate component to locate at least one icon resource group from at least one application residing on a remote system;

an extract component to extract the at least one icon resource group from the at least one application; and

an encode component to encode the at least one extracted icon resource group.

39. The computer readable medium of claim 38 further comprising:

a transmit component that transmits encoded icon information from the remote system to a local system, wherein the icon information includes all the icons associated with at least one application.

40. A computer readable medium storing computer executable components of a local system, comprising:

a receive component to receive encoded icon information from a remote system, wherein the encoded icon information is associated with at least one application residing on the remote system; and

a decode component to decode the encoded icon information.

41. A system that facilitates remote accessing of computer applications comprising:

means for determining that a local computing system desires access to an application residing on a remote computing system;

means for employing a probablisitic determinination analysis in connection with inferring a level of interaction associated with the remote access; and

means for transmitting iconic information associated with the application to the local computing system, the amount of iconic information transmitted being based at least in part on the analysis.

42. A method to facilitate rendering of iconic data within a remote computing access framework, comprising:

scanning an application for an associated icon resource group;

collecting icon data from the icon resource group and converting the icon data to a flat memory model; and

encoding the converted icon data.

43. The method of claim 42, further comprising packaging the encoded icon data as an XML document.