Object-oriented communications framework system with support for multiple remote machine types

• US 6,430,740 B1
• Filed: 06/17/1998
• Issued: 08/06/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 07/19/1995
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Savitzky, Stephen R., Hart, Peter E., Golding, Richard, Roth, Rithy K., Jeng, Tina L.
• Primary Examiner(s): Morse, Gregory
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chavis, John Q.
• Application Number:
  US09/098,600
• Time in Patent Office: 1,511 Days
• Field of Search: 717/2, 709/328, 709/316
• US Class Current: 717/108
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/465 Distributed object oriented systems remote method invocation [RMI] G06F9/548

Abstract

A system enabling an application programmer to construct a plurality of application programs for communicating with a plurality of remote machines of a plurality of machine types, each of the plurality of remote machines having remotely accessible data and remotely performable operations includes a computer system with a memory, a processor, and a mass storage device, the computer system for storing programs, class declarations, and class libraries in an object-oriented programming language, means for compiling files containing source-code representations of application programs in the object-oriented programming language, implementations of a hierarchy of data description classes, each implementation for describing a set of data and for describing methods for manipulating the set of data, implementations of a hierarchy of remote data description classes, each implementation for describing data items contained in one of the plurality of remote machines and for describing methods for accessing the data items, and source code files for a plurality of sample application programs, each sample application program for communicating with at least one of the plurality of remote machines.

Claims

1. A computer program product, for a computer system including a processor and a memory, the computer program product for enabling an application programmer to construct a plurality of application programs for communicating with a plurality of remote machines of a plurality of remote machine types, each of the remote machines having remotely accessible data and remotely performable operations, the computer program product comprising:

a computer readable storage medium comprising;

code implementing a hierarchy of data description classes, configured to describe a set of data which include data items and to direct the processor to manipulate the set of data;

code implementing a hierarchy of remote data description classes, configured to describe the data items contained in the plurality of remote machines and to direct the processor to access the data items; and

source code files for a plurality of sample application programs available to the plurality of remote machines, the source code files operating with the code implementing a hierarchy of remote data description classes to allow text-editing by an application programmer, the source code files operating with the code implementing a hierarchy of remote data description classes to direct the processor to communicate with at least one remote machine; and

code implementing parser classes, each implementation for retrieving during runtime a representation of a plurality of object instances contained in a data file and for enabling the application programs to create in the memory a plurality of object instances from the representation of the plurality of object instances.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the representation of the plurality of object instances includes a textual representation of the object instances to be created in the memory.

3. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein the textual representation of the object instances to be created includes names of classes of the objects to be created and textual representations of the values of their instance variables.

4. The computer program product of claim 1 wherein a data file includes the code implementing the base classes.