At+t Corp.

David M Heath

Michael F Kraley

Sangam Pant

R Patrick Johnson

Stephen Zagieboylo

Deborah Mendez

Edward Belove

James A Culbert

Disclosed is a server architecture for connecting to a plurality of remote client computers each seeking access to applications resident on the server. The architecture provides (1) a reliable, single point of entry for client users that enforces security and recovers immediately from failures; (2) connection management that monitors the user's level of online activity, terminating inactive connections both to save system resources and to limit unnecessary connection charges to the user; (3) application management that spreads users optimally among active application instances, maintaining a pool of available applications, initiating new instances when the pool is low, and which records a user's utilization of different applications for billing purposes; (4) system integrity, which is achieved through division of transaction-management responsibility among the various interrelated components of the invention; and (5) continuous, uninterrupted operation. The invention distributes tasks to different functional modules in a manner that promotes efficiency and ready accommodation of large numbers of users without processing delays.

Management facility for server entry and application utilization in a

Disclosed is an object-oriented approach to storage and transmission of retrievable items in a client-server computer environment. Special processing modules manage retrieval and permanent storage, on client computers, of requested objects in a manner that minimizes unnecessary transmission and storage. The user enters a 'subscription' in connection with items related to hierarchically inferior items. The subscription specifies the amount of information the user desires to download and store locally with respect to a specified hierarchical depth level. The invention also includes a pruning module for deleting, from local storage, items inconsistent with the subscription and which the user does not explicitly indicate a desire to store, and a facility for updating locally stored items upon re-establishment of communication with the server.

Distributed, intermittently connected, object-oriented database and

Growing community of inventors

Nashua, NH, United States of America

David M Heath