Method and system of remote monitoring and support of devices, including handling Email messages having message types specified within the Email message

• US 20050262202A1
• Filed: 10/15/2001
• Published: 11/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Motoyama, Tetsuro, Fong, Avery
• Granted Patent: US 7,343,407 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications

Abstract

In a system for remotely monitoring networked devices and appliances, email messages are sent across networks, the email messages containing configuration, status or other information. For flexibility, it is desirable to quickly and easily change the message type designation, and to easily determine a data structure definition based on the received message type. To achieve this goal, the message type designation of a given message'"'"'s information may be defined within the message itself, and extracted at the receiving end before the information is analyzed or stored according to the data structure definition. Thus, a large number of devices is allowed to communicate configuration, status and/or other types of information in a variety of message types. A method is provided for receiving information concerning a remotely monitored device, the information being contained in a message that also includes a message type designation. The method involves parsing a line from the message to extract the message type designation, determining a data structure definition based on the message type designation, reading data elements from the other lines, and inserting the data elements according to the data structure definition. The method may be implemented in object-oriented programming, in a software module including a data retriever class, an email processor class, and a parser class.

Claims

1. A method of receiving information concerning a remotely monitored device, the information being contained in a message that also includes a message type designation, the method comprising:

parsing a line from the message to extract the message type designation;

determining a data structure type based on the message type designation;

reading data elements from the message; and

storing the read data elements in a data structure of to the determined data structure type.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the information is included in an attachment to an email sent from the remotely monitored device; and

the parsing step includes invoking a function within an object-oriented parser class that obtains lines of string data from an object-oriented email processor class that has extracted the string data from the email attachment.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the parsing step comprises:

parsing the line from the message to extract the message type designation, the message type designation representing one of configuration information and status information of the remotely monitored device.

3. A system for receiving information concerning a remotely monitored device, the information being contained in a message that also includes a message type designation, the system comprising:

means for parsing a line from the message to extract the message type designation;

means for determining a data structure type based on the message type designation;

means for reading data elements from the message; and

means for storing the read data elements in a data structure of the determined data structure type.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein:

the information is included in an attachment to an email sent from the remotely monitored device; and

the parsing means includes means for invoking a function within an object-oriented parser class that obtains string data from an object-oriented email processor class that has extracted the string data from the email attachment.

5. In a system for remotely monitoring a device, the system including:

A) a receiver manager class, and

B) a data retriever, the data retriever including;

i) a data retriever class,

ii) an email processor, and

iii) a parser;

a method of receiving information concerning the remotely monitored device, the information being contained in a message that also includes a message type designation, the method comprising;

a) the data retriever class invoking a function in the email processor to read a line and to read other lines from the message;

b) the data retriever class invoking a function in the parser to parse the line of the message to extract the message type designation;

c) the data retriever class returning the extracted message type designation to the receiver manager class;

d) the receiver manager class determining a data structure type based on the extracted message type designation and passing the data structure type to the data retriever class; and

e) the data retriever class invoking a function in the parser to read data elements from the other lines and to store the read data elements in a data structure of determined data structure type.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein:

the message is included in an email message received by a Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) server; and

the email processor includes functions to interface to the POP3 server.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein:

the message is included in an attachment to the email.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein:

the attachment is a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) attachment.

9. A software module for receiving information concerning the remotely monitored device, the information being contained in a message that also includes a message type designation, the software module comprising:

A) a receiver manager class, and

B) a data retriever, the data retriever including;

i) a data retriever class,

ii) an email processor, and

iii) a parser;

wherein;

a) the data retriever class is configured to invoke a function in the email processor to read a line and to read other lines from the message;

b) the data retriever class is configured to invoke a function in the parser to parse the line of the message to extract the message type designation;

c) the data retriever class is configured to return the extracted message type designation type to receiver manager class;

d) the receiver manager class is configured to determine a data structure type based on the extracted message type designation and to pass the data structure type to the data retriever class; and

e) the data retriever class is configured to invoke a function in the parser to read data elements from the other lines and to store the read data elements in a data structure of the determined data structure type.

10. The software module of claim 9, wherein:

the message is included in an email message received by a POP3 server; and

the email processor class includes functions to interface to the POP3 server.

11. The software module of claim 10, wherein:

the message is included in an attachment to the email.

12. The software module of claim 11, wherein:

the attachment is a MIME attachment.