Dynamic Data Access in a Computer System via Remote Services
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorJohann Pramberger
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present invention relates to the field of network computing. In particular, it relates to a method and respective system for providing access for an application program to remote resources located in an electronic computer network, wherein said application program is implemented on a computer residing in said network. A mechanism is provided to enable local running application programs to dynamically use URL-addressed data in the Internet or an Intranet without any change in their program source code.
Claims9
A method to be performed by a part of the operating system of a computer for providing access for an application program to data of remote resources located in an electronic computer network, wherein said application program is implemented on a computer residing in said network, the method comprising:
- scanning the values of environment variables of said application program for the occurrence of an URL notation;
- invoking a remote function for accessing an URL found in said scanning procedure in order to request a remote resource associated with said URL;
- storing said remote resource in a pre-allocated cache memory section for providing access to said resource;
- and
- verifying the content of the pre-allocated cache memory section on regular intervals or through file system even listener to initiate update from or to a remote file system.
A method for providing access to remote resources for an application program via an environment variable, the method comprising:
- requesting the value of an environment variable in response to a request from an application program;
- scanning the environment variables value for a URL notation;
- replacing said URL notation by a reference pointing to the cache memory section;
- and
- synchronizing the cache memory section with the remote file system.
An electronic data processing system implemented for providing access for an application program to remote resources located in an electronic computer network, wherein said application program is implemented on a computer residing in said network, said system being adapted to perform a method comprising:
- scanning the values of environment variables of said application program for the occurrence of an URL notation;
- invoking a remote function for accessing an URL found in said scanning procedure in order to request a remote resource associated with said URL;
- storing said remote resource in a pre-allocated cache memory section for providing access to said resource and keeping it current through scheduled updates or through an file system event listener;
- and
- updating said remote resource from the pre-allocated cache memory section for providing access to said resource.
A computer program product for providing access for an application program to remote resources located in an electronic computer network, wherein said application program is implemented on a computer residing in said network, said computer program product comprising a computer useable medium including a computer readable program, wherein the computer readable program includes a functional component that when executed on a computer causes the computer to perform the steps of:
- scanning the values of environment variables of said application program for the occurrence of an URL notation;
- invoking a remote function for accessing an URL found in said scanning procedure in order to request a remote resource associated with said URL;
- storing said remote resource in a pre-allocated cache memory section for providing access to said resource and keeping it current through scheduled updates or through an file system event listener;
- and
- storing said created resource in a pre-allocated cache memory section to said remote resource.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.