Dynamic provisioning of identification services in a distributed system

• US 7,756,969 B1
• Filed: 01/30/2004
• Issued: 07/13/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/07/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Clark, Sean E., Clarke, James B.
• Primary Examiner(s): Dharia; Rupal D
• Assistant Examiner(s): MIRZA, ADNAN M
• Application Number:
  US10/767,345
• Time in Patent Office: 2,356 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709/205, 709/223, 709/224, 707/100
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/462 Lookup
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/465 Distributed object oriented systems remote method invocation [RMI] G06F9/548
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/541 via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5012 determining service availability, e.g. which services are available at a certain point in time
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5019 Ensuring fulfilment of SLA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/133 Protocols for remote procedure calls [RPC]
• 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 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

Systems and methods provide identification services over a distributed network. Systems and methods provide the tools to receive data from reader devices, process the received data, and provide the processed data to users. Enhanced event handling and dynamic service provisioning enable robust and flexible deployment of identification services in a distributed network.

Claims

1. A method for providing an identification service in a distributed system, said identification service comprising a plurality of service elements, said method comprising:

for at least one of the plurality of service elements, determining whether an application corresponding to the service element is running in the distributed system;

dynamically creating an application corresponding to the service element, when said determining step determines that the application is not running, wherein each service element comprises an adapter that receives identification data from a reader, a filter that processes the identification data, and a logger that receives the processed data from the filter and notifies a recipient of the processed data; and

monitoring the service elements to determine whether any service element fails, wherein;

the dynamically creating further comprises (a) downloading code for the application corresponding to each service element from a code server in the distributed system; and

(b) registering the application corresponding to each service element with a registry service in the distributed system; and

the identification information further includes at least one of;

a location of the item, a time the identification information was read from the item, a date the identification information was read from the item, an identifier of the reader, and a location of the reader.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein an event handling protocol establishes communication whereby the identification data is transmitted as an event produced by the adapter.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein an event handling protocol establishes communication whereby the processed data is transmitted as an event produced by the filter.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein an event handling protocol establishes communication whereby the user is notified by an event produced by the filter.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising re-establishing communication with a service element, when the service element fails.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the service elements further include a queue, the method further comprising:

receiving, by the queue, the identification data; and

holding the identification data in queue for the filter.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the processing further comprises:

extracting an identification code from the identification data, and wherein the processed data comprises the identification code.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the identification code is an electronic product code (EPC).

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the reader is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reader and the identification data represents an RFID tag.

10. A method for providing an identification service in a distributed system, said identification service comprising a plurality of service elements, said method comprising:

dynamically creating an application corresponding to at least one of the plurality of service elements, wherein each service element comprises an adapter that receives identification data from a reader, a filter that processes the identification data, and a logger that receives the processed data from the filter and notifies a recipient of the processed data; and

monitoring the application corresponding to each service to determine whether any application fails, wherein;

the dynamically creating further comprises (a) downloading code for the application corresponding to each service element from a code server in the distributed system; and

(b) registering the application corresponding to each service element with a registry service in the distributed system; and

the identification information further includes at least one of;

a location of the item, a time the identification information was read from the item, a date the identification information was read from the item, an identifier of the reader, and a location of the reader.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the reader is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reader.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the identification code is an electronic product code (EPC).

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

formatting the processed data according to a format corresponding to the user.

14. A system for providing a distributed identification service comprising:

a reader service having comprising a plurality of service elements wherein each service element comprises;

an adapter that receives identification information from a reader, a filter that processes the identification information, and a logger that notifies a user of the processed information;

a registry service that establishes the reader service;

a monitor service that determines whether the reader service fails and

a service provisioner that requests dynamic creation of an application corresponding to the service elements, if the application corresponding to the service elements is not running in the system, wherein;

the dynamic creation of the application further comprises (a) downloading code for the application corresponding to each service element from a code server in the distributed system; and

(b) registering the application corresponding to each service element with a registry service in the distributed system; and

the identification information further includes at least one of;

a location of the item, a time the identification information was read from the item, a date the identification information was read from the item, an identifier of the reader, and a location of the reader.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising:

a code server containing code for use in establishing the reader service and its service elements.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the reader is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reader.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the reader is configured to read the identification information from an item, and the identification information includes an identification code for the item.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the identification code is an electronic product code (EPC).

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the user is an application.