CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT OF AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE

• US 20080243766A1
• Filed: 03/30/2007
• Published: 10/02/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Godston, Jon, Drackett, Christopher W., Matteo, Deborah A., Douros, Kenneth W., Zancho, William F., Thompson, Maria B., Nowlan, Steven
• Granted Patent: US 7,539,796 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/102 Bill distribution or payments
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/245 from a network towards a terminal
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99939 Privileged access

Abstract

A configuration of an electronic device (400) is managed by obtaining (1005) stakeholder attributes of a component resident in the electronic device from stakeholder requirements (FIGS. 7, 8) of one or more stakeholders and correlating (1020) the respective stakeholder attributes as well as available sets of values of attributes of the component to determine (1025) a set of selected values of the attributes, and establishing (1030) at least a portion of a new configuration of the electronic device using the set of selected values of the attributes of the component. When the stakeholder requirements cannot be met with an existing application in the electronic device, the application may be formed (1200) from components of existing applications.

Claims

1. A method for managing the configuration of an electronic device, comprising:

obtaining first stakeholder requirements;

making a first determination as to whether an application corresponding to the first stakeholder requirements is resident in the electronic device;

when the first determination is affirmative,

making a second determination as to whether prior stakeholder requirements are stored for the electronic device,

when the second determination is affirmative, establishing selected values of attributes of the application by performing a correlation that uses the first and prior stakeholder requirements and available values of attributes of the application,

when the second determination is negative, establishing selected values of attributes of the application by performing a filtering that uses the first stakeholder requirements and available values of attributes the application, and

establishing a new configuration of the electronic device using the selected values of attributes of the application; and

when the first determination is negative,

making a third determination as to whether a set of components that can be used to form the application are resident in the electronic device, and available for reuse

when the third determination is affirmative,

combining the set of components to form the application,

establishing available values of attributes of the application,

determining selected values of attributes of the application by performing a correlation that uses the stakeholder requirements and the available values of attributes of the application, and

establishing a new configuration of the electronic device using the selected values of attributes of the application.

2. A method for managing the configuration of an electronic device, comprising:

obtaining first stakeholder attributes of a component resident in the electronic device;

determining whether prior stakeholder attributes of the component are stored in the electronic device for one or more prior stakeholders;

when the determination is affirmative, establishing a set of selected values of the set of attributes of the component by performing a correlation that uses the first and prior stakeholder attributes, and available sets of values of attributes of the component; and

establishing at least a portion of a new configuration of the electronic device using the set of selected values of the attributes of the component.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the correlation determines the set of selected values from the first and prior stakeholder attributes and the available set of values using a stakeholder correlation function that negotiates the selected values using priorities of the first and prior stakeholder attributes that are associated with desired values of the first and prior stakeholder attributes, as well as the available sets of values of the component.

4. The method according to claim 2, wherein when the determination is negative, establishing a set of selected values of the set of attributes of the component by performing a filtering that uses the first stakeholder attributes and the available set of values of each attribute of a set of attributes of the component.

5. The method according to claim 4 wherein the first stakeholder attributes are derived from a set of first stakeholder requirements that correspond to at least one application that comprises a plurality of components, and wherein the obtaining of first stakeholder attributes, one of establishing a set of selected values by correlation and establishing a set of selected values by filtering, and establishing at least a portion of a new configuration, are repeated for each of the plurality of components.

6. The method according to claim 4, wherein the filtering uses an AND process.

7. The method according to claim 4, wherein the filtering uses a vector dot product process.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein a threshold is coupled to at least one result of the vector dot product process to trigger a limit on a corresponding selected value of the set of selected values

9. The method according to claim 2, wherein the first stakeholder attributes comprise a desired first set of values and an associated first priority for each of at least some attributes of a set of attributes of the component, and wherein the prior stakeholder attributes comprise a desired second set of values and an associated second priority for each of at least some attributes of the set of attributes of the component.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein obtaining the first stakeholder attributes comprises:

obtaining first stakeholder requirements comprising a set of desired first stakeholder feature values and associated feature priorities of a stakeholder feature that corresponds at least to the component in the electronic device;

deriving the first stakeholder attributes from the first stakeholder requirements.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein the feature priority associated with at least some of the first stakeholder features is null.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein the associated priority of a set of values of an attribute that is derived from a feature priority that is null is set to a default value.

13. The method according to claim 9, wherein the first stakeholder attributes are stored in memory as a first stakeholder requirements table that comprises each desired first set of values being stored at an intersection of an attribute and a capability, and wherein the available sets of values of the set of attributes are stored in memory as a application table comprising each available set of values being stored at an intersection of a attribute and a component.

14. The method according to claim 9, wherein a first priority associated with a first set of values of at least one of the at least some attributes of the attributes of the component comprises a sequence of priority values.

15. The method according to claim 2, wherein the first stakeholder is one of the group consisting of a user, a device manufacturer, a service provider, an application provider, an application developer, a content owner, and an environment location owner.

16. A method for managing the configuration of an electronic device, comprising:

obtaining stakeholder requirements of a stakeholder feature;

making a first determination as to whether an application corresponding to the stakeholder feature is resident in the electronic device;

when the first determination is negative,

making a second determination as to whether a set of components that can be used to form the application corresponding to the stakeholder feature are resident in the electronic device and available for reuse,

when the second determination is affirmative,

combining the set of components to form the application,

establishing available sets of values of attributes of the application,

deriving values of stakeholder attributes from the stakeholder requirements,

determining a set of selected values of the application by performing a correlation that uses the values of the stakeholder attributes and the available set of values of attributes of the application, and

establishing a new configuration of the electronic device using the set of selected values of the attributes of the application.

17. The method according to claim 16, further comprising storing the application as an available application of the electronic device, with the established available sets of values of attributes of the application.

18. The method according to claim 16, further comprising, when the second determination is negative:

making a third determination as to whether a set of sub-components to form a missing component of the application is resident in the electronic device and available for reuse; and

when the third determination is positive, the sub-components are combined to form the missing component.

19. The method according to claim 16, further comprising storing the missing component as an available component of the electronic device, with the established available sets of values of the attributes of the component.