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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsFrank William Gilchrist, Eric Nels Herness, Eric H. Jenney, John Christopher Ripstra, George James Romano
Estimating the term…
A framework for use with object-oriented programming systems provides a common message processing system structure that can be placed on any OOP platform and be configured to support any e-mail message protocol standard or specific mail server function. The framework defines an e-mail message as a number of distinct objects, each of which contains information that describes some portion of the message. All messages received by a system in which the framework is implemented are defined on this core object structure. Another set of objects and methods define the processing steps required for a mail server to process a message. A message is received as a class of message objects, which are assigned a message type that determines the subsequent processing steps to which the message object is subjected. As a message is processed, the objects of which it is comprised are changed, so that the message processing can be interrupted and then resumed without loss or duplication of processing steps.
A computer system comprising:
A computer system comprising:
An object oriented framework for use in a computer system connected to a network, the computer system receiving e-mail messages from originating network users and having an operating system that supports an object oriented programming environment that maintains a message center object that controls e-mail message processing, a message class comprising a set of message objects that comprise originator, recipient, and message content information contained in a received e-mail message, and a set of object methods that are used by the message center object to place the information of the received e-mail message into the message objects according to a message processing protocol of the received e-mail message and process it accordingly, the framework including at least one core function that cannot be modified by a user and at least one extensible function defined by a user to customize the framework and thereby define a desired network mail server processing system.
A program product for use in a computer system having an operating system that supports an object-oriented programming environment, the program product comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.