Virtual Printer

• US 20200133604A1
• Filed: 06/15/2016
• Published: 04/30/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 06/15/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Solix Technologies, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Solix Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: GUNDAVELLI, Sai, GAITONDE, Vikram, LEE, Mark, PERUGUPALLI, Mahesh Kumar, HOTA, Suryanarayana
• Granted Patent: US 10,698,645 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1203 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. print management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1238 Secure printing, e.g. user identification, user rights for device usage, unallowed content, blanking portions or fields of a page, releasing held jobs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1245 by conversion to intermediate or common format
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1248 by printer language recognition, e.g. PDL, PCL, PDF
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1273 Print job history, e.g. logging, accounting, tracking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1288 in client-server-printer device configuration

Abstract

A virtual printing system includes a driver system, a network, a virtual print server, a database, and a search and report terminal to capture and store a print stream in PDF or PDF/A format. The driver system captures and converts metadata and print data from the client devices into a print stream. The virtual printer receives and prints the print stream as PDF or PDF/A files. The search and report terminal aids in searching within the PDF or PDF/A files.

Claims

1. A virtual printing system for generating a portable document format (PDF) file, wherein the virtual printing system is connected to a user device, and wherein the user device includes a digital document, the virtual printing system comprising:

a server that is communicatively coupled to the user device by way of a printer driver for receiving print data and metadata corresponding to the print data, generates the PDF file that includes the print data, wherein the user device includes the printer driver, wherein the user device receives a print command and generates the print data corresponding to the digital document, and wherein the printer driver captures the metadata corresponding to the print data;

a memory that is connected to the server for receiving and storing the metadata and the PDF file, wherein the metadata and the PDF file are indexed and stored in the memory, and wherein the memory conforms to the Hadoop Distributed File System; and

a search terminal connected to the memory for accessing the metadata and the PDF file, wherein the search terminal provides a role-based access to the metadata and the PDF file, and wherein at least one of an Apache Solr engine, an Apache Tika engine, and an Apache Lucene engine is used to search for the metadata and the PDF file.

2. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein a user provides the print command to the user device, and wherein the print command specifies the digital document that is to be printed.

3. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein status information of the server is transmitted to the printer driver by the server, and wherein the status information of the server includes at least one of a busy information, an offline information, and an available status information.

4. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein the metadata includes at least one of a user name, a user identification, a group name, a group identification, an operating system name, an Internet Protocol address, an application name, a system name, a date, and a time.

5. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein additional metadata corresponding to the PDF file is included by way of the search terminal, and wherein the additional metadata is indexed and stored in the memory.

6. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein the server performs an integrity check on the print data and the metadata using a plurality of integrity check algorithms, and wherein the plurality of integrity check algorithms include at least one of checksums, SHA-1 hashes, and MD5 hashes.

7. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein the server communicates with the user device by way of the printer driver using a port address of the user device.

8. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein the printer driver converts the print data and the metadata into Postscript data, and wherein the server receives the Postscript data and converts the Postscript data into the PDF file using a Ghostscript software.

9. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein the memory conforms to at least one of an Apache spark file system, an IBM Netezza file system, an Oracle Exadata file system, a Pivotal Greenplum file system, an FTP file system, an Amazon S3 file system, and a Windows Azure Storage Blob (WASB) file system.

10. The virtual printing system of claim 1, wherein the printer driver receives facsimile data from the user device, wherein the user device is a facsimile machine and the facsimile data corresponds to the digital document.

11. A method for generating a portable document format (PDF) file by a virtual printing system, the method comprising:

receiving print data corresponding to a digital document by a printer driver, wherein a user device includes the printer driver and the digital document, and wherein the user device receives a print command and generates the print data;

capturing metadata corresponding to the print data by the printer driver, wherein the metadata is captured subsequent to the reception of the print data;

converting the print data and the metadata into Postscript data by the printer driver;

receiving the Postscript data by a server, wherein the server is communicatively coupled to the user device by way of the printer driver;

extracting the print data and the metadata from the Postscript data by the server;

generating the PDF file that includes the print data by the server;

receiving the PDF file and the metadata by a memory, wherein the memory is connected to the server;

storing the metadata and the PDF file by the memory, wherein the metadata and the PDF file is indexed and stored in the memory, and wherein the memory conforms to the Hadoop Distributed File System; and

accessing the metadata and the PDF file by way of a search terminal, wherein the search terminal provides a role-based access to the metadata and the PDF file, and wherein at least one of an Apache Solr engine, an Apache Tika engine, and an Apache Lucene engine is used to search for the metadata and the PDF file.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein a user provides the print command to the user device, and wherein the print command specifies the digital document that is to be printed.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein status information of the server is transmitted to the printer driver by the server, and wherein the status information of the server includes at least one of a busy information, an offline information, and an available status information.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the metadata includes at least one of a user name, a user identification, a group name, a group identification, an operating system name, an Internet Protocol address, an application name, a system name, a date, and a time.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein additional metadata corresponding to the PDF file is included by way of the search terminal, and wherein the additional metadata is indexed and stored in the memory.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein the server performs an integrity check on the Postscript data using a plurality of integrity check algorithms, wherein the plurality of integrity check algorithms include at least one of checksums, SHA-1 hashes, and MD5 hashes.

17. The method of claim 11, wherein the server converts the Postscript data into the PDF file using Ghostscript software.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein the memory stores the metadata in an Optimized Row Columnar (ORC) file format.

19. The method of claim 11, wherein the memory conforms to at least one of an Apache spark file system, an IBM Netezza file system, an Oracle Exadata file system, a Pivotal Greenplum file system, an FTP file system, an Amazon S3 file system, and a Windows Azure Storage Blob (WASB) file system.

20. The method of claim 11, wherein the printer driver receives facsimile data from the user device, and wherein the user device is a facsimile machine and the facsimile data corresponds to the digital document.