Using content aggregation to build administration consoles

• US 20050198201A1
• Filed: 03/05/2004
• Published: 09/08/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 03/05/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Schreiber, Elizabeth A., Sweitzer, John W., Srivastava, Shikha, Choudhary, Samar, Britton, Kathryn H., Mitchell, Christopher C., Bohn, Joseph A., McGee, Jason R., Uthe, Robert T., King, Richard A., Jones, Carol A., Pandiarajan, Vijay, Petty, Douglas R., Shortley, Timothy G., Ferguson, Donald F.
• Granted Patent: US 7,493,563 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/218
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/6418 Hybrid transport

Abstract

Content aggregation is used to build administration consoles. Preferred embodiments enable providing a solution-based approach to information technology (“IT”) administration, whereby content can be flexibly arranged to provide a content view that is adapted for the IT solution deployed in a particular IT environment. In preferred embodiments, portal technology is used for the aggregation framework, and portlets are used for creating content. Alternatively, other approaches such as struts and tiles may be used. Preferred embodiments deploy an administration console as a Web-accessible application, and this console consolidates the administration interfaces for an arbitrary set of management operations, including administration of an arbitrary collection of hardware and/or software resources. Roles/permissions may be used when rendering content for the console, thereby customizing a view to individual end users (or user groups).

Claims

1. A method of aggregating content for a console, comprising steps of:

defining one or more views that are renderable on the console, wherein a definition of each view specifies one or more content-creating software entities that can be invoked to create content to be rendered in the view;

rendering one of the defined views, wherein a selectable representation is also rendered for at least one of the invocable software entities specified in the definition for the rendered view;

invoking a particular one of the invocable software entities, responsive to selection of the selectable representation thereof; and

rendering, on the console, content created by the invoked software entity.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the invoking step further comprises invoking a plurality of the invocable software entities and the rendering step further comprises rendering content created by more than one of the invoked software entities.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein each of the definitions is specified using a markup language document.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the markup language documents are encoded in Extensible Markup Language (“

XML”

) notation.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the view is a page.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the selectable representation is rendered in a navigation pane of the console.

7. The method according to claim 6, further comprising the step of dynamically building the navigation pane using the definition of the rendered view.

8. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of dynamically building a navigation pane containing the selectable representations of each of the invocable software entities and wherein the rendering step renders the navigation pane on the console.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein at least one of the definitions further comprises an identification of one or more authorized users of one or more of the invocable software entities specified in that definition.

10. The method according to claim 1, wherein at least one of the definitions further comprises an identification of one or more authorized users of the defined view.

11. The method according to claim 9, further comprising the step of suppressing the selectable representation of each invocable software entity for which a current user of the console is not one of the identified authorized users.

12. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of suppressing the selectable representation of each invocable software entity for which an implementation is not available.

13. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of suppressing the selectable representation of each view for which no invocable software entity implementation is available.

14. The method according to claim 1, wherein each definition further comprises information to be used when creating the selectable representations.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein at least one definition further comprises filtering criteria associated with one or more of the invocable software entities.

16. The method according to claim 15, further comprising the step of suppressing the selectable representation of each invocable software entity for which the filtering criteria do not match currently-active filtering preferences.

17. The method according to claim 16, wherein the currently-active filtering preferences are preferences of a current user of the console.

18. The method according to claim 1, wherein an aggregation framework is used for the console.

19. The method according to claim 18, wherein the aggregation framework is a portal and the invocable software entities are portlets.

20. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of defining a new renderable view that specifies one or more of the content-creating software entities specified in one or more previously-defined views, where the new view enables content created by those content-creating software entities to be rendered in an alternative arrangement.

21. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of rearranging how the content in a previously-defined view will be rendered by altering the specification of the content-creating software entities in the previously-defined view.

22. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of programmatically adding additional content to a previously-defined view, responsive to installation of a resource to be managed from the console, without requiring human interaction to cause the addition of the content.

23. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of programmatically removing previously-defined content from a previously-defined view, responsive to uninstalling a resource to be managed from the console, without requiring human interaction to cause the removal of the content.

24. The method according to claim 1, wherein a selectable representation is also rendered for one or more of the views and wherein a currently-displayed view is replaced, responsive to selecting the selectable representation of one of the one or more views, with the view corresponding to the selected selectable representation.

25. A method of providing a console for a user, further comprising steps of:

specifying a definition for each of a plurality of pages, wherein each definition identifies at least one invocable software entity for each page;

rendering one of the pages on the console for the user, using page layout information specified in the definition for the rendered page;

selecting, by the user from the rendered page, a plurality of the invocable software entities, using a selectable representation thereof that is rendered on the console;

invoking the selected software entities;

aggregating content resulting from the invoking step into an aggregated view, according to the page layout information specified in the definition for the rendered page; and

rendering the aggregated view on the console.

26. The method according to claim 25, wherein the selecting step selects the plurality of invocable software entities using a selectable representation which is specified as a task that applies to multiple resources, and wherein the plurality of selected invocable software entities cause the task to be invoked against the multiple resources responsive to the invoking step.

27. The method according to claim 26, wherein at least two of the resources against which the task is invoked are different from one another and wherein this difference is transparent to the user during the invoking step.

28. A system for aggregating content for a console, comprising:

means for defining one or more views that are renderable on the console, wherein a definition of each view specifies one or more content-creating software entities that can be invoked to create content to be rendered in the view;

means for rendering one of the defined views, wherein a selectable representation is also rendered for at least one of the invocable software entities specified in the definition for the rendered view;

means for invoking a particular one of the invocable software entities, responsive to selection of the selectable representation thereof; and

means for rendering, on the console, content created by the invoked software entity.

29. The system according to claim 28, wherein an aggregation framework is used for the console.

30. The system according to claim 29, wherein the aggregation framework is a portal and the invocable software entities are portlets.

31. A computer program product for aggregating content for a console, the computer program product embodied on one or more computer-readable media and comprising computer-readable program code means for carrying out steps of

defining one or more views that are renderable on the console, wherein a definition of each view specifies one or more content-creating software entities that can be invoked to create content to be rendered in the view;

rendering one of the defined views, wherein a selectable representation is also rendered for at least one of the invocable software entities specified in the definition for the rendered view;

invoking a particular one of the invocable software entities, responsive to selection of the selectable representation thereof; and

rendering, on the console, content created by the invoked software entity.

32. The computer program product according to claim 31, wherein an aggregation framework is used for the console.

33. The computer program product according to claim 32, wherein the aggregation framework is a portal and the invocable software entities are portlets.