Personal messaging application programming interface for integrating an application with groupware systems

• US 20080126486A1
• Filed: 09/15/2006
• Published: 05/29/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Sposetti, Jeffrey Thomas, Heist, Pete, Agatone, Kevin John, Cole, Nathan, Hurley, Jonathan Michael
• Granted Patent: US 7,996,855 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/00 User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/56 Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

A personal messaging application programming interface can be utilized by a developer in order to add groupware functionality to an application. The interface can include various schemas and providers that allow the schemas to connect to a collaboration server which provides the groupware functionality. The schemas can further include item and container classes and can extend other schemas so as to provide functionality that is more specific to the collaboration server. The items and containers can represent various entities on the collaboration server. The providers can use stubs in order to create connections to the collaboration server and can implement the schema hierarchy so as to map the functionality defined by the schema into various core calls on the collaboration server.

Claims

1. A method for integrating an application with a collaboration server, comprising:

definining a schema to represent functionality in the collaboration server, the schema including one or more schema classes;

implementing the schema in developing an application;

compiling the application;

receiving a selection for a provider for the application wherein the provider is associated with a specific collaboration server; and

accessing the functionality in the collaboration server by the application as defined by the schema, via the use of the provider.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

instantiating a stub for the provider, the stub adapted to create a connection to the collaboration server and to receive method calls from the schema classes in the application and to map the method calls to functionality in the collaboration server.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

dynamically switching the provider for the application to a new provider such that the application is enabled to access a different collaboration server that is associated with the new provider.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the schema includes an item and a container wherein the item has one or more properties which are key value pairs and the container is adapted to store one or more items or other containers.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the item and the container are associated with entities residing on the collaboration server.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the schema and the provider comprise a Java application programming interface employed by a developer in building Java applications.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the schema extends other schemas so as to extend the functionality provided in the other schemas to more closely correspond to the functionality in the collaboration server.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the provider supports the schema hierarchy because of Java class inheritance.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the provider makes WebDAV calls directly to the collaboration server in order to allow the application to access the functionality in the collaboration server.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the provider makes HTTP calls to an intermediary collaboration service machine which in turn translates the HTTP calls to specific interface calls on the collaboration server.

19. The system of claim 1 wherein a schema further includes a hierarchy of other schemas that extend the schema and add new classes not available in the schema in order to expose more functionality on the collaboration server.

11. A system for integrating an application with a collaboration server, comprising:

an application;

an interface for accessing functionality in the collaboration server, the interface including a schema referenced in the application code; and

a provider associated with the collaboration server that implements the schema classes and allows them to interact with the functionality in the collaboration server in its specific interface;

wherein switching the provider to a different provider enables the application to access another collaboration server with a different interface while maintaining the same schema.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the schema further includes an item class and a container class, the container class for storing one or more items.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the item class corresponds to an entity provided by the collaboration server.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the provider is an implementation of the schema that associates the schema with entities on the collaboration server such that the application is capable of accessing those entities.

15. The system of claim 11 wherein the provider makes federated content management API calls to a virtual content repository in order to access the content provided thereon.

16. The system of claim 11 wherein the application is a Java application and the schema and providers comprise a Java application programming interface (API).

17. The system of claim 11 further comprising:

a collaboration service deployed on an intermediary computer for translating method calls from the application to specific interface calls on the collaboration server.

18. The system of claim 11 wherein the provider makes WebDAV calls directly to the collaboration server via HTTP.

20. A computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon which when executed by one or more processors cause a system to:

definine a schema to represent functionality in the collaboration server, the schema including one or more schema classes;

implement the schema in developing an application;

compile the application;

receive a selection for a provider for the application wherein the provider is associated with a specific collaboration server; and

access the functionality in the collaboration server by the application as defined by the schema, via the use of the provider.