Dynamic provisioning for filtering and consolidating events

• US 7,792,874 B1
• Filed: 06/07/2005
• Issued: 09/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Clarke, James B.
• Primary Examiner(s): Wong; Don
• Assistant Examiner(s): Hwa; Shyue Jiunn
• Application Number:
  US11/146,120
• Time in Patent Office: 1,918 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/803
• 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 41/0604 using filtering, e.g. reduction of information by using priority, element types, position or time
• 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 41/5054 Automatic deployment of services triggered by the service manager, e.g. service implementation by automatic configuration of network components
• 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 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

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 comprising:

dynamically creating, at a first computer resource of a distributed system, the first computer resource being configured as an identification service, an instance of a service element upon discovery of a reader in the distributed system, the service element comprising at least one of an adapter, a filter, and a logger, the reader operable to obtain identification data with at least one of a scanner and a sensor;

receiving, by the filter, criteria in accordance with predetermined instructions;

receiving, by the adapter, identification data from one or more readers identified by the criteria;

providing the identification data from the adapter to the filter;

processing the identification data by the filter, wherein the filter is a data filter for at least one of removing identification data which does not match the criteria and removing noise data from the identification data;

providing notification, by the logger, of the processed data;

monitoring the service element(s) to determine whether any service element fails; and

re-establishing communication with the application corresponding to the service element,

wherein the monitoring further comprises, for each of the service element(s), determining whether an application corresponding to the service element is running in the distributed system and creating the application corresponding to the service element, if the application corresponding to the service element is not running in the distributed system, and

wherein at least one of the following is carried out using an event handling protocol wherein data is transmitted as an event;

the receiving of the identification data, the providing of the identification data to the filter, and the providing the notification of the processed data.

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

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

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the identification code is an electronic product code (EPC).

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

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the criteria includes a start trigger definition and a stop trigger definition to define a period of time for processing the identification data by the filter.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the start trigger definition includes a first identification data pattern that, if detected by the reader, signals the filter to start processing the identification data and the stop trigger definition includes a second identification data pattern that, if detected by the reader, signals the filter to stop processing the identification data.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the adapter wirelessly receives the identification data from the readers through a wireless communication network.

8. A method comprising:

dynamically creating, at a first computer resource of a distributed system, the first computer resource being configured as an identification service, an instance of a plurality of service elements upon discovery of a reader in the distributed system, the plurality of service elements comprising an adapter, a filter, and a logger, the reader operable to obtain identification data with at least one of a scanner and a sensor;

receiving, by the filter application, criteria specified by a user;

receiving, by the adapter application, identification information corresponding to an item from one or more readers identified in the criteria;

providing the identification information from the adapter application to the filter application;

processing the identification information by the filter application to create processed information including at least an identification code for the item, wherein the filter is a data filter for at least one of removing identification data which does not match the criteria and removing noise data from the identification data;

providing the processed information from the filter application to the logger application;

providing the processed information to a user by the logger application;

monitoring the applications corresponding to each service element to determine whether any application fails, wherein the monitoring further comprises, for each of the service element(s);

determining whether an application corresponding to the service element is running in the distributed system and creating the application corresponding to the service element, if the application corresponding to the service element is not running in the distributed system; and

re-establishing communication with the application corresponding to the service element, wherein at least one of the following is carried out using an event handling protocol wherein data is transmitted as an event;

the receiving of the identification data, the providing of the identification data to the filter, and the providing the notification of the processed data.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein dynamically creating further includes:

downloading code for an application corresponding to each service element from a code server in the distributed system; and

registering the application corresponding to each service element with a registry service in the distributed system.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein 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 8, wherein the reader comprises a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reader.

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

13. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

formatting the processed data based on the criteria.

14. The method of claim 8, wherein the adapter wirelessly receives the identification data from the readers through a wireless communication network.

15. A system comprising:

a first computer resource of a distributed system configured as an application service having service elements comprising;

an adapter that receives information from one or more readers in the distributed system based on predetermined criteria,

a data filter that processes the identification information, wherein the data filter performs at least one of removes identification data which does not match the criteria and removes noise data from the identification data;

a logger that provides notification of the processed information, the logger storing processed information on a computer readable medium;

a registry service that establishes the application service and its service elements, the registry service dynamically creating an instance of a service element upon discovery of each reader in the distributed system, each reader operable to obtain identification data with at least one of a scanner and a sensor; and

a monitor service that determines whether the reader service or any of its service elements fails, wherein the monitor service, for each of the service elements, determines whether an application corresponding to the service element is running in the distributed system and creates the application corresponding to the service element, if the application corresponding to the service element is not running in the distributed system,

wherein, after the monitor service determines a failure of a reader service or any of its service elements, communication with the application corresponding to the service element is re-established, and

wherein at least one of the following is carried out using an event handling protocol wherein data is transmitted as an event;

the receiving of the identification data, the providing of the identification data to the filter, and the providing the notification of the processed data.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

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

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more readers are Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag readers.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more readers are configured to read the identification information from an item, and the identification information includes an identification code for the item.

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

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the user is an application.

21. The system of claim 15, wherein the application service further comprises a report filter for generating a report of the processed data based on the predetermined criteria.

22. The system of claim 21, further comprising a queue for holding the report generated by the report filter, wherein the logger provides notification of the processed information in an XML file transmitted to the queue.

23. The system of claim 15, wherein the predetermined criteria includes a poll request and the logger provides notification the user of the processed information in response to the poll request.

24. The method of claim 15, wherein the predetermined criteria includes a start trigger definition and a stop trigger definition to define a period of time for processing the identification data by the data filter.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the start trigger and stop trigger are universal resource identifiers (URIs).

26. The method of claim 15, wherein the predetermined criteria identifies the one or more readers.

27. The method of claim 15, wherein the adapter receives the identification data from the readers through a wireless communication network.