International Business Machines Corporation

Alessandro Capomassi

Luigi Pichetti

Rosario Gangemi

Marcello Vitaletti

Silvano Lutri

Domenico Di Giulio

Eliana Cerasaro

Alessandro Terenzi

Alessandro Ferenzi

A method and a corresponding apparatus for inventoring software products on a plurality of computer are proposed. The inventoring system aims at populating a software catalog without the manual intervention of an administrator. The present invention reduces the cost of producing and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base (the catalog) which contains definitions of software products and the related signature. Information about software products and their related signature is obtained through a process which gathers information from a potentially very large collection of computers. Any occurrence of a group of identical files across multiple computers is considered a reliable indicator that they belong to the installation footprint of a product.

Method and apparatus for populating a software catalogue with software knowledge gathering

A method and a corresponding system and computer-usable medium for discovering software products on a plurality of one or more computers. The discovering method, system and/or computer-usable medium can populate a software catalogue without the manual intervention of an administrator. Such an approach reduces the cost of producing and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base (e.g., the catalogue), which contains definitions of software products and the related signature. Signature definitions combine information obtained by the data gathering process and information contained in the registries. This combination allows the creation of a robust signature which reduces to a great extent the possibilities of both 'false positive' and 'false negative' results.

Method for generating a robust software signature

A method and a corresponding apparatus for inventorying software products on a plurality of computer are proposed. The inventorying system aims at populating a software catalogue without the manual intervention of an administrator. The present invention reduces the cost of producing and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base (the catalogue) which contains definitions of software products and the related signature. Information about software products and their related signature is obtained through a process which gathers information from a potentially very large collection of computers. Any occurrence of a group of identical files across multiple computers is considered a reliable indicator that they belong to the installation footprint of a product.

Providing access to a shared resource in a computing environment involves maintaining a timestamp for each shared resource, the timestamp representing the time the resource was last accessed. Then, detecting if the resource is reserved before obtaining access to the resource, by reading the resource timestamp, and if the timestamp represents a future time relative to the current time, indicating that the resource is reserved and delaying access to the resource. If the resource is unreserved, then accessing the resource by reading the resource timestamp to detect any changes in the timestamp since the last reading; if unchanged, then accessing the resource. If the resource is unreserved, then obtaining exclusive access to the resource by reserving the resource by incrementing its timestamp by a reservation period; accessing the resource; and resetting the resource timestamp to the current time.

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Rome, Italy

Alessandro Capomassi