Method and apparatus for archiving and unarchiving objects
First Claim
1. A method of archiving an already instantiated software object having at least two types of settings, wherein said types include global settings and user settings, said object used in a multi-user environment, the method comprising:
- a) identifying global settings of the already instantiated software object;
b) storing the identified global settings in a first data archive;
c) identifying user settings of the already instantiated software object; and
d) storing the identified user settings in a second data archive.
2 Assignments
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Accused Products
Abstract
The invention is directed towards methods and apparatuses for archiving and unarchiving objects. Some embodiments of the invention archive and unarchive objects that have global and user settings in multi-user environments. To archive objects, these embodiments identify which object settings are global settings and which settings are user settings. They store the global settings in an archive, and then store the user settings in another archive. To unarchive each object, some embodiments identify the object'"'"'s settings in one or both archives. These embodiments instantiate the object, and retrieve its settings from the data archives and use the retrieved settings to define the values of the settings of the instantiated object. Some embodiments use key-value coding techniques to retrieve values and load values in an object. Key-value coding allows an archiving or unarchiving process to retrieve and load setting values for an object by using the setting names.
33 Citations
28 Claims
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1. A method of archiving an already instantiated software object having at least two types of settings, wherein said types include global settings and user settings, said object used in a multi-user environment, the method comprising:
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a) identifying global settings of the already instantiated software object; b) storing the identified global settings in a first data archive; c) identifying user settings of the already instantiated software object; and d) storing the identified user settings in a second data archive. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. For a multi-user application that runs on a computer, a method of archiving multiple software objects, wherein the objects are part of the application, the objects having global and user settings, the method comprising:
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a) identifying a global setting of an object of the application, wherein each global setting is defined uniformly for all users; b) storing the identified global setting in a global data archive for the application; c) for a particular user, identifying a user setting of the object of the application, wherein each user setting of the object is defined particularly for each user; and d) storing the identified user setting in a user data archive for the particular user, the user data archive separate from the global data archive. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
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22. In a multi-user application that runs on a computer, a method of unarchiving objects of the application, said objects having settings stored in a set of data archives including a global data archive and a plurality of user data archives, the method comprising:
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a) for a particular user, instantiating an object for which settings are stored in at least one of the data archives; b) if the object has a setting in the global data archive, retrieving the object'"'"'s setting from the global data archive, said global data archive storing settings that are defined uniformly for all users; c) if the object has a setting in a particular user data archive for the particular user, retrieving the object'"'"'s setting from the particular user data archive, the particular user data archive storing settings that are defined particularly for the particular user; d) when a setting is retrieved from one of the data archives, using the retrieved setting to define a setting of the instantiated object; and e) wherein said application and said archives are all on a single computer. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28)
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Specification