Method and apparatus for simplifying the deployment and serviceability of commercial software environments

• US 7,506,338 B2
• Filed: 08/30/2004
• Issued: 03/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/30/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Pigott, Michael A., Frauenhofer, Thomas V., Mummert, Todd W., Alpern, Bowen L., Bala, Vasanth, Auerbach, Joshua S., George, Jobi
• Primary Examiner(s): Dam; Tuan Q
• Assistant Examiner(s): TECKLU, ISAAC TUKU
• Application Number:
  US10/929,337
• Publication Number:
  US 20060047974A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,660 Days
• Field of Search: 717/138
• US Class Current: 717/177
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/445 Program loading or initiating bootstrapping G06F9/4401; security arrangements for program loading or initiating G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44521 Dynamic linking or loading; Link editing at or after load time, e.g. Java class loading
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45537 Provision of facilities of other operating environments, e.g. WINE I/O emulation G06F13/105
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/60 Digital content management, e.g. content distribution
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• 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: H04L 9/3236 using cryptographic hash functions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3247 involving digital signatures
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/235 Processing of additional data, e.g. scrambling of additional data or processing content descriptors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/435 Processing of additional data, e.g. decrypting of additional data, reconstructing software from modules extracted from the transport stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8173 End-user applications, e.g. Web browser, game
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments

Abstract

A method for executing on a first computer an application having an installed image prepared on a second computer, wherein the installed image is virtually installed on the first computer, is disclosed. The method includes emulating on the first computer a native environment of the second computer. The method further includes detecting an operation of the application upon data, wherein the operation requires an operation on data located on the first computer, and wherein a copy of the data is located in the virtually installed image. The method further includes directing the operation of the application to operate on the data located in the virtually installed image.

Claims

1. A method comprising steps of:

A) preparing on a preparation machine an installed image comprising multiple semantic levels of an application and its non-operating system dependencies;

B) virtualizing the installed image on an execution machine to produce a virtually installed image by using a hierarchy of selective virtualizers, wherein the virtualizing is selective such that not all operations of the executing software at any particular level are virtualized;

wherein each of the virtualizers is responsible for partially virtualizing different semantic levels of the application;

wherein virtualization occurs where needed and more than one virtualizer can be active in a process;

wherein the virtualizing comprises steps of;

defining virtualization of the virtually installed image by characterizing a hierarchy and selectivity of the virtualization, such that said virtualization is both selective and hierarchical;

emulating on the execution machine a platform native to the preparation machine;

emulating on the execution machine a virtual machine of the application;

emulating on the execution machine other applications interacting with the application;

dividing software assets of the installed image into shards, said shards comprising variable size, semantically-determined pages;

C) storing the shards in an associative backing store;

D) executing the software assets on the execution machine as if said software assets were installed on said execution machine, wherein the executing step comprises;

intercepting requests at multiple levels; and

redirecting the requests to code that emulates the behavior of the application installed on the preparation machine;

E) integrating the execution of the software assets with the virtualizers, such that execution information can be collected efficiently about execution problems on the execution machine; and

F) integrating the execution of the software assets with the associative backing store, such that software information about said software assets and their versions can be collected.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising a step G) collecting the execution and software information.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising a step H) diagnosing a defect in the execution of the virtually installed image on the execution machine.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising a step I) repairing the diagnosed defect by modifying, from a third machine, behavior of the executing virtually installed image on the execution machine.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of D) executing further comprises a step of prefetching the shards before they are actually needed for execution.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of C) storing comprises storing the shards in a shard cache in the execution machine.