Accessing, viewing and manipulation of references to non-modifiable data objects

• US 6,694,357 B1
• Filed: 07/02/1998
• Issued: 02/17/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Copernican Technologies Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Copernican Technologies Incorporated
• Inventors: Volnak, Will
• Primary Examiner(s): Jones, Hugh
• Assistant Examiner(s): THOMSON, WILLIAM D
• Application Number:
  US09/109,135
• Time in Patent Office: 2,056 Days
• Field of Search: 709/218, 709/219, 709/203, 709/328, 709/310, 707/10, 707/8, 707/513, 345/776, 345/738, 345/739, 345/826, 345/853, 345/751, 715/513, 715/515, 715/530
• US Class Current: 709/218
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99938 Concurrency, e.g. lock management in shared database

Abstract

A method and apparatus are provided for accessing, viewing and manipulating data stored in a computer system. This is achieved by selecting one or more of the non-modifiable data objects stored in a computer system, creating references to the selected objects and adding the references to a reference list. The reference list is then manipulated to allow a user to add to, remove from or search the references in the reference list. In some embodiments, different operations are performed by different computers connected to a computer network such as the Internet. In such cases, data objects are stored on a server computer and searched by client computers connected to the server computer over the network. A reference list is stored on the client computers and can be directly manipulated by the user without a need for further interaction with the server computer.

Claims

1. A method for accessing, viewing and manipulating data stored in a computer system having one or more computers, the method comprising:

storing a set of entries in a permanent archive on one of the computers of the computer system;

storing a collection of references to one or more of the entries in a notebook on one of the computers;

displaying the collection of references and one or more of the entries in a window of one of the computers; and

manipulating the collection of references in the notebook.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the references further comprises a modifiable tag field.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein each of the data objects contains a searchable comment field and a searchable tag field.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the entries in the archive as a collection of non-modifiable data objects.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the non-modifiable collection of data objects is created on a first computer and the method further comprises adding a plurality of references to data objects stored in the non-modifiable collection of data objects to a second collection of references stored on a second computer, such that access to the non-modifiable data objects corresponding to references in the second collection of references is provided by the notebook and access is denied to the journal.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the collection of references to the entries are created by more than one search of the entries.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein a reference to a single entry is contained in more than one collection of references.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the references in the collection of references are organized in a user-modifiable order.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein each data comprises a unique identifier, one or more fields of meta-information and freeform content.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the meta-information is used in searching the entries and is displayed on the window of the computer system together with the contents of the entry.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising automatically adding references in the first collection of references to the second collection of references.

12. The method of claim 14, wherein the network is selected from the group consisting of:

a local area network, a wide area network, a global network, and the internet.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising a third computer, wherein the entries are created in a journal on the third computer.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more entries are selected from the group consisting of:

text data, image data, audio data, and multimedia data.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the search parameters are automatically sifted by comparing a text portion of the entries to a list of predetermined text segments to determine whether one or more of the text segments occur within a text portion of the entries.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the predetermined text segments are used in successive sifting operations.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the entries in the permanent archive are retrieved only through the corresponding reference in one of the notebooks.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising

identifying a set of group entries from the set of entries;

automatically forwarding the set of group entries to the permanent archive; and

automatically forwarding references to the set of group entries to one or more computers associated with the group.