Method and system for tracking clients

• US 20040107280A1
• Filed: 11/26/2003
• Published: 06/03/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 02/03/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: William Gates
• Original Assignee: William Gates
• Inventors: Hasha, Richard
• Granted Patent: US 7,353,271 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/38 for implementing user interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/449 Object-oriented method invocation or resolution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/465 Distributed object oriented systems remote method invocation [RMI] G06F9/548
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/00 General purpose image data processing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2803 Home automation networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/282 based on user interaction within the home receiver circuitry for displaying additional information being controlled by a remote control apparatus H04N21/42204
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/2849 Audio/video appliances
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/285 Generic home appliances, e.g. refrigerators
• CPC Class Codes: H05B 47/155 Coordinated control of two or more light sources
• CPC Class Codes: H05B 47/18 via data-bus transmission
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation

Abstract

A method and system for tracking access by clients to a server object of a server class. The client tracking system provides a derived client tracking server class that includes an overriding implementation of a query function of the server class. The overriding implementation instantiates a phantom server object and returns a pointer to the instantiated phantom server object. The phantom server object has functions that correspond to and override the functions of the server class. These overriding functions perform custom processing on a client-by-client basis and forward their invocation to be corresponding functions of the server object. When a client invokes the query function of the client tracking server object, a pointer to a phantom server object is returned. From then on, when that client invokes a function of the phantom server object, custom processing can be performed for that client.

Claims

1. A data structure for a client tracking system, including:

a client tracking server object derived from a server class that provides an implementation of a query interface function that overrides the query interface function of the server class, wherein a phantom manager object is a data member of the client tracking server class.

2. A data structure according to claim 1, wherein instead of providing an implementation of the query interface function that overrides the query interface function of the server class, the client tracking server object provides an alternative implementation of the query interface function wherein if the query interface function invokes another function according to convention, then the other function is overridden.

3. A data structure according to claim 1, wherein the phantom manager class of the phantom manager object inherits from a base phantom manager class that includes at least one of (1) a phantom going away function that is invoked by a phantom server object to notify the phantom manager object that the phantom server object is being destructed, (2) a get object pointer function that returns a pointer to an embedding client tracking object, (3) a create function that is invoked by the query interface function of the client tracking server object to create a phantom server object, (4) a get phantom count function that returns the number of phantom server objects currently managed by the phantom manager object, (5) a create instance function that instantiates a phantom server object and that is invoked by the create function and (6) an instance going away function that is invoked by the phantom going away function.

4. A data structure according to claim 1, wherein the phantom manager class of the phantom manager object inherits from a base phantom manager class that includes at least one of (1) a my list pointer data member that provides a pointer to phantom server objects managed by the phantom manager object, (2) a my object pointer data member that provides a pointer to a client tracking server object in which the phantom manager object is embedded and (3) a my count data member that provides a count indicative of the number of phantom server objects managed by the phantom manager object.