Pluggable service delivery platform

• US 7,356,615 B2
• Filed: 12/29/2000
• Issued: 04/08/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Liu, Dong, Cai, Hong, Liu, Leo Y.
• Primary Examiner(s): Caldwell; Andrew
• Assistant Examiner(s): BLAIR, DOUGLAS B
• Application Number:
  US09/750,940
• Publication Number:
  US 20010016880A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,657 Days
• Field of Search: 709/220, 709/222, 709/223, 709/227, 709/228, 709/246
• US Class Current: 709/246
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/04 specially adapted for terminals or networks with limited capabilities; specially adapted for terminal portability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/565 Conversion or adaptation of application format or content adding application control or application functional data H04L67/561
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/08 Protocols for interworking; Protocol conversion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

The present invention discloses a pluggable service delivery platform for supporting many devices to many services in an e-business application, comprising a device-platform interface, a service-platform interface and a platform kernel section. The service delivery platform of this invention is a flexible and scalable platform to easily “plug” a new device and a new service, and the different parts of the platform are componentized. Any one of the components can be replaced by a 3^rd party'"'"'s products, providing they abide certain open interface like Java Servlet, LDAP, etc.

Claims

1. A computer server system, comprising

a pluggable service delivery system that supports access to different types of backend services by different types of computing devices, the pluggable service delivery system comprising:

a memory system to store programming instructions that are executable to implement a device abstraction layer, a kernel service engine, a service abstraction layer, and a processing system,

the kernel service engine comprising;

a runtime layer to provide online information access;

an administrative layer to add and delete user, device, and service information; and

a development layer to provide support for addition of new services and devices supported by the platform,

wherein the processing system executes the stored programming instructions to;

(i) implement the device abstraction layer to (1) receive service requests from different types of computing devices, (2) transform the received service requests into XML requests that are sent to and processed by the kernel service engine and (3) transform XML documents, which are received from the kernel service engine in response to the XML requests, into device specific formats supported by the computing devices;

(ii) implement the kernel service engine to control access to different types of services through the service abstraction layer and to provide an XML interface between the device abstraction layer and the service abstraction layer; and

to

(iii) implement the service abstraction layer to (i) enable seamless access to the different types of services through invocation of backend data sources through service wrappers, wherein each service wrapper provides a standard interface to a corresponding one of the different types of services and (ii) transform data accessed from backend data sources into XML, formatted documents.

2. The computer server system of claim 1, wherein the kernel service engine is a synchronized service engine and an asynchronized service engine.

3. The computer server system of claim 1, wherein the device abstraction layer transforms an XML document to one of a plurality of different kinds of data formats supported by the computing device based on a device style sheet.

4. The computer server system according to claim 1, wherein the device abstraction layer provides a corresponding gateway for each of the computing devices for transforming between different communication protocols.

5. The computer server system according to claim 1, wherein the kernel service engine includes a profile manager to manage user, device, and service information.

6. The computer server system according to claim 1, wherein the kernel service engine transfers user, device, and service information between the services and devices.

7. The computer server system according to claim 1, wherein the administrative layer adds a new device by generated a device profile.

8. The computer server system according to claim 1, wherein the administrative layer adds a new service by generating a service profile.

9. The computer server system according to claim 1, wherein the kernel service engine comprises a billing interface and a platform runtime monitor.