US 6,606,649 B1 · Application programming interface functions for supporting an improved message store for hand-held computers

Abstract

A set of APIs is used in creating and maintaining hierarchical folder structure for the storage of electronic messages in a hand-held computer. Such a folder structure permits the creation of a folder hierarchy for each message service with which the user has an account. As a result, the hand-held message store can organize messages received from different services. The APIs provide the functions necessary for an application process to access messages in the hierarchical folder structure. This set of APIs also provides backwards compatibility with APIs utilized to create and maintain a flat folder structure organization of the message store. This backward compatibility permits a hand-held computer embodying the present invention to be used to execute application processes that were developed to interact with an earlier generation flat folder structure.

Claims72

Dependent claims

A method of communicating between an application process executing on a hand-held computer and a data manipulation process executing on the hand-held computer, the method comprising:

issuing, by the application process, one of a plurality of commands corresponding to commands manipulating a flat folder structure having a plurality of call parameters comprising a current message context;
receiving, by the data manipulation process, the one of a plurality of commands issued by the application process and parsing the call to retrieve the call parameters;
and
issuing, by the data manipulation process, one of a plurality of extended commands corresponding to the one of a plurality of commands received from the application processing having a plurality of call parameters comprising the current message context and an extended folder ID corresponding to a parsed folder ID.

1 more element

A method of communicating between an application process executing on a hand-held computer and an data manipulation process executing on the hand-held computer, the method comprising:

issuing, by the application process, one of a plurality of commands corresponding to commands manipulating a user-specified, hierarchical folder structure for use in storing electronic messages in a hand-held computer, the commands having a plurality of call parameters comprising a current message context;
receiving, by the data manipulation process, the one of a plurality of commands issued by the application.process and parsing the call to retrieve the call parameters;
and
issuing, by the data manipulation process to the application process, one of a plurality of command acknowledgments having one or more acknowledgment parameters.

1 more element

An apparatus for manipulating and storing electronic messages received from a remote computer within a data store, the apparatus operating an messaging module within a hand-held computer, and said apparatus comprising:

a backward compatibility module executing standard commands being issued by the messaging module and having a plurality of parameter in a standard format, the backward compatibility module executes commands by converting the plurality of parameters from the standard format to an extended format and issuing a call to an extended command corresponding to the standard command being executed;
a message data manipulation module executing extended commands having a plurality of parameter in the extended comprising a current message context, a folder ID, and a extended folder ID corresponding to a parced folder ID, the message data manipulation module performs the functions of storing, manipulating, and retrieving messages in the data store.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Application programming interface functions for supporting an improved message store for hand-held computers

Life of this patent

Application programming interface functions for supporting an improved message store for hand-held computers

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims72