Presentation service which enables client device to run a network based application

• US 20040148375A1
• Filed: 02/17/2004
• Published: 07/29/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 02/12/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Integra SP Limited (Tiger Telematics Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Integra SP Limited (Tiger Telematics Incorporated)
• Inventors: Levett, David Lawrence, Mills, Robert Ian, Jin, Yih-Chyun
• Granted Patent: US 7,627,658 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/46 Multiprogramming arrangements

Abstract

A presentation server which enables a client device to run a network based application by sending structured data from one or more data sources to software on the client device. The presentation server decouples the client device from the data source by (i) insulating the data source from needing to handle directly any display, data storage, data querying or communications functions relating to the client device and (ii) insulating the client device from needing to handle communications functions which are specific to the data source.

Claims

1. A presentation server which enables a client device to run a network based application by sending structured data from one or more data sources to software on the client device,

wherein the presentation server decouples the client device from the data source by (i) insulating the data source from needing to handle directly any display, data storage, data querying or communications functions relating to the client device and (ii) insulating the client device from needing to handle communications functions which are specific to the data source.

2. The presentation server of claim 1 which enables (i) the data source to indirectly configure any display, data storage, data querying or communications functions relating to the client device and (i) enables the client device to indirectly communicate with the data source.

3. The presentation server of claim 1 in which communication to the data source is carried out locally or over a network and in which interaction can occur via services provided by the data source.

4. The presentation server of claim 1 in which communication to the data source is carried out locally or over a network and in which interaction can occur via message queues to which the data source publishes and the presentation server subscribes.

5. The presentation server of claim 1 in which communication to the data source is carried out locally or over a network and in which interaction can occur via message queues to which the presentation server publishes and the data source subscribes.

6. The presentation server of claim 1 in which communication to the data source is carried out locally or over a network and in which interaction occurs via direct calls to the data source'"'"'s application programmable interface (API) where the underlying system provides the low-level protocol.

7. The presentation server of claim 1 in which communication to the data source is carried out locally or over a network and in which interaction occurs via direct calls to one or more databases on the data source.

8. The presentation server of claim 1 in which communication to the data source is carried out locally or over a network and in which interaction with the data source is loosely coupled.

9. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the data source from needing to handle directly any display, data storage, data querying or communications functions relating to the client device by communicating with client software on the client device which comprises:

(a) a communications layer to send and receive messages over the network;

(b) a database layer to store, and allow querying of, the structured data;

(c) a rendering layer which generates, from the structured data in the database layer, data for a user interface;

in which the client software is self-contained to provide all of the communications, local data storage/querying and rendering resources needed to run the network based application on the client device.

10. The presentation server of claim 1 which also allows the data source to handle indirectly any display, data storage, data querying or communications functions relating to the client device by forwarding communications from the data source to client software on the client device.

11. The presentation server of claim 1 which by virtue of strictly separating the data source from the client device allows business logic of an application to be fully independent of the presentation logic on the client device, such that the data source need not even know of the existence of a client device even though it may be a necessary part of the network application.

12. The presentation server of claim 1 which by virtue of strictly separating the data source from the client device allows presentation logic of a client device to be fully independent of the business logic on the data source, even to the extent that the client device need not even know of the existence of a data source even though it may be a necessary part of the network application.

13. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the client device from needing to directly handle communications functions which are specific to the data source by translating messages from the client device to a form suitable for the data source.

14. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the client device from needing to directly interpret raw data provided by the data source by translating messages from the data source to a form suitable for the client device.

15. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the data source from needing to directly manage updates of the structured data held on the client device by receiving a single data update from the data source and being solely responsible for identifying all client devices that need that data update, and sending the appropriate updating data to all of the client devices that need it.

16. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the client device from needing to know the quantity or configuration of multiple data sources to which the presentation server is connected, by aggregating data from multiple data sources into a single data stream for each client device.

17. The presentation server of claim 1 which maintains a data stream per client device in which the data is pushed over a persistent connection to the client device over the network as soon as it is available.

18. The presentation server of claim 1 which maintains a data stream per client device in which the data is sent to the client device over the network in response to regular or ad-hoc polling requests from the client device.

19. The presentation server of claim 1 which compresses the data received from the data source prior to sending the information to the client device.

20. The presentation server of claim 1 which encrypts the data received from the data source prior to sending the information to the client device, thus insulating the data source from the enhanced security needed to allow a remote client device to run the network application over a public or insecure network.

21. The presentation server of claim 1 which decrypts the data received from the client device prior to sending the information to the data source, thus insulating the data source from the enhanced security needed to allow a remote client device to run the network application over a public or insecure network.

22. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the data source from needing to manage updates of the structured data held on the client device by regularly polling the data source for changes.

23. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the data source from needing to directly manage distribution of streaming data to multiple client devices, where the data source needs only to provide a single stream to a presentation server which in turn broadcasts the information in a scalable fashion to multiple (potentially more than tens of thousands) of client devices that may in turn be connected to the presentation server at different performance rates over the network.

24. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the data source from needing to handle communications functions specific to different client devices by having a generic communications capability (data receipt/acknowledgement/response) enabling it to communicate with multiple client browsers, multiple client device types and across multiple bearers.

25. The presentation server of claim 1 which insulates the data source from needing to handle communications functions specific to different client devices by having a generic display capability by being able to download to the database layer one or more of the following, each configured appropriately for a destination display, device type and bearer:

such as panels, windows, controls, data binding to the controls and event models.

26. The presentation server of claim 1 which can process a request by the client device for an update to a data source and return an indication of whether the update was successful as indicated by a response from the data source.

27. The presentation server of claim 26 in which, if the update failed, the data source may optionally provide further information about the reasons for the failure in a way that can be displayed or interpreted by the client device.

28. The presentation server of claim 1 which can process a request by the client device for an update to a data source and return an indication of whether the update was successful even if the data source does not directly respond with a success or failure indication.

29. The presentation server of claim 28 which can be configured to automatically generate responses to the client device on behalf of the data source.

30. The presentation server of claim 28 which can process a request by the client device for a single transaction update to multiple data sources and return an indication of whether the update was successful.

31. The presentation server of claim 30 which can process a request by the client device for a single transaction update to multiple data sources in such a way that all data source updates are only confirmed once each data source has preliminarily indicated that the update would succeed.

32. The presentation server of claim 31 in which failure of any one of the transaction updates causes all the transaction updates to be cancelled and a failure response to be returned to the client device that requested the transaction.

33. The presentation server of claim 31 in which a preliminary validation of all transactions causes all transactions to be confirmed and returns a success indication to the client device that requested the transaction.

34. The presentation server of claim 1 which returns the message that results in the user interface at the client device being updated at the same time as it issues a message that results in the user interface of different client devices being updated in the same manner.

35. The presentation server of claim 1 which can update marginal portions of the database layer in a client device by sending, instead of an entire structured data tree hierarchy, a key which identifies the part of the structured data tree which has changed.

36. The presentation server of claim 1 which can update a database layer by altering, in real time, configuration data held in the database layer which defines how the structured data can be interacted with from within the user interface.

37. The presentation server of claim 1 which can prioritise updates to a client device that is returning on-line after an absence.

38. The presentation server of claim 1 which can update the database layer by re-initialising all of the structured data on a client device that is returning on-line after an absence by applying rules to determine if re-initialisation is appropriate.

39. The presentation server of claim 1 which stores updated structured data in a transaction log record from which a client can pull updates.

40. The presentation server of claim 1 which stores updated data in a transaction log record and pushes updates as appropriate to the client device.

41. The presentation server of claim 1 which is able to send updating data to different client devices at different times or frequencies.

42. The presentation server of claim 1 which can be configured to skip unnecessary intermediate updates to streaming data for devices whose connection or client device is too inefficient to receive and process every update.

43. The presentation server of claim 1 which can maintain a statefull connection with the client device.

44. The presentation server of claim 43 which maintains a statefull connection with the client device by routing a unique, incrementing number to the client device, which the presentation server logs in relation to all data updates, so that when the client device returns on-line from an absence, the client device sends the latest number it received back to the presentation server so that the presentation server can determine what updates the client device did not receive and therefore needs to be sent.

45. The presentation server of claim 1 which is sent by the client device any parameters that need to be persistent and stores these parameters or routes them to storage for later retrieval.

46. The presentation server of claim 1 which provides scalability in the number of client devices a network based application can communicate with by being itself scalable with:

(a) multiple CPUs on a machine;

(b) multiple CPUs on multiple machines in a parallel or in a parent/child arrangement,

and managing the message flows from each CPU to the applicable client devices.

47. The presentation server of claim 1 which provides fault tolerance by being itself scalable with:

(a) multiple CPUs on a machine;

(b) multiple CPUs on multiple machines in a parallel or in a parent/child arrangement, providing a mechanism to automatically compensate for failures of instances on one or more CPUs by reconfiguring the network configuration at run-time and optionally re-establish connectivity for each orphaned client device to an alternate presentation server

48. The presentation server of claim 1, forming part of a network of several geographically separated presentation servers, some or all of which operate as edge servers.

49. The presentation server of claim 1 forming part of a network of several geographically separated machines organised into a topology which is appropriate to the physical arrangement of sites in a business running the network based application.

50. The presentation server of claim 1 which can combine structured data from several different server based applications for a given client device.

51. The presentation server of claim 1 which can determine automatically and in real time, when a client device requests several images, whether it should reduce bandwidth consumption by placing all of the images into a single, composite image file, each image sharing data which is not image specific.

52. The presentation server of claim 1 which modifies the data it sends to a client in dependence on information sent to it from the client which relates to the display limitations of the client device.

53. The presentation server of claim 1 which uses a session object associated with an applet to determine the specific display parameters and structured data to be served to the client device.

54. The presentation server of claim 1 in which the data source is a web server, a back end application or a web service.

55. A web application which, when invoked or run, causes a presentation server defined in any preceding claims 1-54 to be run.

56. A hardware server, which hosts a presentation server defined in any preceding claims 1-54.