At+t Corp.

Edward Belove

R Patrick Johnson

Stephen Zagieboylo

Deborah Mendez

Michael F Kraley

Sangam Pant

David M Heath

O Stevens Leland, Iii

James A Culbert

A computer architecture that permits applications resident on remote 'client' computers to communicate simply and efficiently with applications resident on a central server is disclosed. Client applications can effectively retrieve information from the server without detailed knowledge of server applications, the location of a requested data item or the particular hardware configuration of the host or even the client. A circuit manager module opens and maintains a communication circuit to the appropriate server application, supervising routing of messages from all client applications to that server application. The circuit manager also receives all incoming messages, routing them to the appropriate client applications. A client application can specify message destination in the form of a specific circuit (which requires substantial program awareness of communication patterns), or an identifier associated with the target application, or the type of information being requested from the server.

Apparatus using circuit manager to associate a single circuit with each

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

Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Edward Belove