Dan Smith

Title: Dan Smith: Workflow and Event-Processing Inventions.

Introduction

Dan Smith is an inventor associated with Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and International Business Machines Corporation. His patent work includes inventions related to event processing and the graphical presentation of compatible workflow steps. He is credited with 2 patents.

Latest Patents

“Program Agent Initiated Processing of Enqueued Event Actions” describes an Event Manager that receives events requiring action, parses them into action types, and places them in an Event Queue. Program agents are dynamically added to or retired from a pool according to the number of queued events of each type. Available agents search for work they can handle, claim matching queue entries, and perform the associated actions.

“Method and Apparatus for Graphically Displaying Compatible Workflow Steps” presents a way to help users identify compatible steps in a workflow through a graphical interface. The system evaluates whether one step’s output parameters can serve as another step’s inputs, in both directions, and changes the appearance of a step when the parameters are compatible.

Career Highlights

Smith’s listed inventions address software workflow management and event-driven processing. Both focus on coordinating operations: one assigns queued actions to suitable program agents, while the other visually indicates which workflow steps can work together. His company affiliation is International Business Machines Corporation.

Collaborations

Smith’s listed coworkers include Benjamin H. Szekely and Sean James Martin.

Conclusion

Dan Smith’s two patents reflect work on organizing software processes, from assigning event actions to agents to helping users recognize compatible workflow steps.