Patch management system

• US 20070113225A1
• Filed: 10/06/2006
• Published: 05/17/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/11/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Felts, David
• Granted Patent: US 8,245,216 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/172
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57

Abstract

Patch management system can be used for maintaining patches downloaded for software. The patch management system can ensure that there are no conflicts between the installed patches.

Claims

1. A patch management system to store and apply patches for at least one software program, the patch management system adapted to maintain multiple applied patch configurations for the same software program on the same machine.

2. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the same machine has different applied patch configurations for different domains.

3. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the patch management system maintains the patch configurations for multiple software programs.

4. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the software program is an application server program.

5. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein one of the applied patch configurations is for a test environment.

6. The patch management system of claim 5, wherein another of the applied patch configurations is for a production environment.

7. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the patch management system includes a graphical interface.

8. The patch management system of claim 7, wherein the graphical interface is adapted to show the applied patches.

9. The patch management system of claim 7, wherein the graphical interface is adapted to show available patches.

10. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the patch management system allows the rollback of a patch without requiring the software program to be reinstalled.

11. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the patch management system allows for the installation of service packs.

12. The patch management system of claim 11, wherein the patches depend on a service pack such that the installation of a new service pack removes the patches.

13. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the patch management system does dependency checking to determine whether a patch to be applied conflicts with a previously applied patch.

14. The patch management system of claim 1, wherein the patch management system can connect to a server using the Internet to obtain patches.

15. A patch management system to store and apply patches for at least one software program, the patch management system adapted to maintain multiple applied patch configurations for the same software program on the same machine, wherein one of the applied patch configurations is a test configuration.

16. The patch management system of claim 15, wherein the same machine has different applied patch configurations for different domains.

17. The patch management system of claim 15, wherein another of the applied patch configurations is a production environment.

18. A patch management system to store and apply patches for at least one software program, the patch management system adapted to maintain multiple applied patch configurations for the same software program on the same machine, wherein the patch management system includes a graphical interface for selecting whether a patch is to be applied to the entire machine or to specific domain, the graphical interface allowing the display of applied and available patches for each domain.

19. The patch management system of claim 18, wherein one of the domains is a test configuration domain.

20. The patch management system of claim 19, wherein another of the domains is a production configuration domain.