Integrating discovery functionality within a device and facility manager

Abstract

Techniques are provided for implementing the WS-DeviceProfile standard as a multi-threaded process (“DFM”) executing on a multi-function peripheral (“MFP”). The DFM takes care of the discovery of devices and services on a network. The DFM also acts as a facility manager. The DFM implements various web services in a single component that applications can re-use. The DFM insulates these applications from some of the more complex details of the web services that the DFM implements. The MFP may comprise several different applications that each use web services provided by the DFM. The threads of the DFM can handle separate tasks concurrently. For example, one thread, of the multi-threaded DFM, may perform one or more functions specified by the WS-DeviceProfile protocol, while another thread may perform one or more functions specified by a WS-Discovery protocol.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.