US 6,745,224 B1 · Object framework and services for periodically recurring operations

Abstract

A computer system includes an object oriented framework that provides a set of application integration interfaces that support programmatic updating operations for maintaining locally stored copies of resources such as hypertext document pages from remote servers on a computer network. The updating operations continually check for updates to the data at the remote server and download updated versions of the resources to maintain concurrency of the locally stored copy. The updating operations are performed while a connection to the remote network is left idle, to maximize usage of on-line connection time. The updating operations also can be programmatically scheduled by a client program of the updating operations. The updating operations include updating the contents of a folder or directory in a local file system as specified in a file at a remote server on the network, and providing automatically updating and populating groups of sites or document pages organized by category.

Claims35

Dependent claims

An object-oriented framework for scheduling an operation to be performed by an agent object on a periodically recurring basis in a computer, comprising:

a scheduler object;
a scheduler object integration interface supported on the scheduler object for use by a client application program to set programmatically a schedule item associated with the agent object, said schedule item indicating the periodically recurring basis on which to cause the agent object to perform the operation, whereby the client application program programmatically controls the performance of the operation on the scheduled basis;
the scheduler object operating responsive to the client application program programmatically setting the schedule item with the scheduler object integration interface to cause the agent object to be persistently stored in the computer, and to cause the agent object to be restored and initiate the operation by the agent object on the periodically recurring basis.

An object oriented framework in a computer system for programmatically maintaining an updated, locally stored copy of remote data for off-line use, comprising:

an update operation object providing an interface callable from a client application to set properties relating to an update operation for maintaining a local copy of the remote data, whereby the client application programmatically configures properties relating to the update operation;
a scheduler object providing an interface callable from the client application to set times on a periodic basis at which to perform the update operation of the update operation object, whereby the client application programmatically controls the performance of the operation on the scheduled basis;
a downloader object residing locally and operating responsive to the update operation object and the scheduler object to check the remote data for changes at the times and download the remote data so as to update the local copy when the remote data is determined to have changed, whereby the client application programmatically maintains an updated local copy of the remote data.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Object framework and services for periodically recurring operations

Life of this patent

Object framework and services for periodically recurring operations

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims35