International Business Machines Corporation

Guerney Douglass Holloway Hunt

Maria Rene Ebling

Hui Lei

Tamar Eilam

Eric Michel Levy-Abegnoli

Arun Kwangil Iyengar

Murthy V Devarakonda

Dimitrios Pendarakis

Richard Harold Boivie

Hidayatullah Habeebullah Shaikh

William Eric Hall

Jarir Kamel Chaar

Christopher Ward

Kattamuri Ekanadham

David R Safford

Daniel Manuel Dias

Peter Anthony Sandon

Kenneth Alan Goldman

Rajat Mukherjee

Daby Mousse Sow

Rong Nickle Chang

Bhushan Pradip Jain

Giovanni Pacifici

Mohit Kapur

Richard Pervin King

Alexander V Konstantinou

Andrew Neil Trossman

Guruduth Somasekhara Banavar

Melissa J Buco

German Sergio Goldszmidt

Enriquillo Valdez

Li Xu

Laura Zaihua Luan

Thomas R Gissel

Lily Barkovic Mummert

Sandra D Miller

Daniel Georges Jean-Marie Mauduit

Ghislaine Couland

Gregory Sallmard Stewart

A processor in a computer system, the processor including a mechanism supporting a Secure Object that comprises information that is protected so that other software on said computer system cannot access or undetectably tamper with said information, thereby protecting both a confidentiality and an integrity of the Secure Object information while making the Secure Object information available to the Secure Object itself during execution of the Secure Object. The mechanism includes a crypto mechanism that decrypts and integrity-checks Secure Object information as said Secure Object information moves into the computer system from an external storage system, and encrypts and updates an integrity value for Secure Object information as said Secure Object information moves out of the computer system to the external storage system, and a memory protection mechanism that protects the confidentiality and integrity of Secure Object information when that information is in the memory of the computer system.

System and method for supporting secure objects using a memory access control monitor

Techniques are presented for managing execution of processes on a data processing system The data processing system comprises process instances that are each an execution of a corresponding process. Each process instance comprises activity instances. Business impacts are determined for the process instances, the activity instances, or both. Order of execution of the activity instances is managed by allocating resources to activity instances in order to achieve an objective defined in terms of the business impacts. In another embodiment, requests are received for the execution of the processes. For a given request, one or more of the operations of assigning, updating, aggregating, and weighting of first business impacts associated with the given request are performed to create second business impacts associated with the given request. Additionally, requests can be modified. Modification can include changing the process requested or process input as deemed appropriate, combining related requests into a single request, or both. Unmodified requests and any modified requests are managed.

Execution order management of multiple processes on a data processing system by assigning constrained resources to the processes based on resource requirements and business impacts

A method of pre-fetching and preparing content in an information processing system is provided. The method includes the steps of generating at least one content pre-fetching policy and at least one content preparation policy, wherein each of the policies are at least in part a function of context information associated with a user. The content is pre-fetched based on information contained within the at least one content pre-fetching policy. Once the content has been pre-fetched, it is prepared based on information contained within the at least one content preparation policy. The context information associated with the user includes at least one of the user's usage patterns, current location, future plans and preferences.

Method and apparatus for content pre-fetching and preparation

System for managing a life cycle of a virtual resource. One or more virtual resources are defined. The one or more defined virtual resources are created. The created virtual resources are instantiated. Then, a topology of a virtual resource is constructed using a plurality of virtual resources that are in at least one of a defined, a created, or an instantiated state.

Method and system for constructing virtual resources

The present invention provides systems, methods and apparatus for automatically provisioning and managing resources in a computing utility. Its automation procedures are based on a resource model which allows resource-specific provisioning and management tasks to be encapsulated into components for reuse. These components are assembled into more complex structures and finally computing services. This invention provides a method for constructing a computing service from a set of resources given a high level specification. Once constructed, the service includes a component that provides management function, which can allow modification of its underlying set of resources.

Componentized automatic provisioning and management of computing environments for computing utilities

A hierarchical gateway system for use in a message delivery system is disclosed, in which each tier of gateways in the hierarchy includes means for transforming incoming messages in a manner required by downstream end-user devices. The hierarchical gateway system has the advantage of being scalable and extensible while avoiding transmission bottlenecks as the number of end-user device types, and their differing system requirements, increase. The invention is operable in the context of a notification server architecture, as well as the Web.

Method and apparatus for providing extensible scalable transcoding of multimedia content

Techniques for providing a dynamic alert indication to a user of a signal receiving device. One technique includes the steps of processing a signal transmitted from a signal transmitting device to determine at least one mode to be associated with an alert indication, wherein the processing step includes the step of accessing a look-up table containing information associated with a user of the signal receiving device to determine the at least one mode to be associated with the alert indication; and alerting the user of the signal receiving device via the alert indication that the signal has been received by the signal receiving device.

Method and apparatus for providing dynamic user alert

A flexible and extensible context server for collecting, maintaining, and disseminating context information is disclosed. The context server receives requests from requesters for context information via a secure context server interface (SCS API). Communication between the requesters and the context server is conducted by means of predetermined forms. The requests received at the SCS API are passed to a mediator, which collects data from various context drivers. Each context driver is coupled to the mediator, and collects predetermined type of context information from at least one context information source. The mediator determines the appropriate context driver which can handle the request, based on its type. Operation of the context server is also controlled by a set of context utilities, including a context cache for storing recently obtained context information, a privacy engine for storing privacy preferences and an event engine for event handling.

Method and apparatus for providing a flexible and scalable context service

An affinity-based router and method for routing and load balancing in an encapsulated cluster of server nodes is disclosed. The system consists of a multi-node server, wherein any of the server nodes can handle a client request, but wherein clients have affinity to one or more of the server nodes that are preferred to handle a client request. Such affinity is due to state at the servers either due to previous routing requests, or data affinity at the server. At the multi-node server, a node may be designated as a TCP router. The address of the TCP router is given out to clients, and client requests are sent thereto. The TCP router selects one of the nodes in the multi-node server to process the client request, and routes the request to this server; in addition, the TCP router maintains affinity tables, containing affinity records, indicating which node a client was routed to. In processing the client request, the server nodes may determine that another node is better suited to handle the client request, and may reset the corresponding TCP router affinity table entry. The server nodes may also create, modify or delete affinity records in the TCP router affinity table. Subsequent requests from this client are routed to server nodes based on any affinity records, possibly combined on other information (such as load).

Affinity-based router and routing method

A method and system for building scaleable TCP/IP services such as a cluster web server out of a switch or switched network such as an ATM switch or ATM switched network. For example, a distributed large scale TCP router can be built using an ATM switch network. The scaled services can be presented as a single service to clients. The scaleable services can balance the load on the individual servers in the cluster. The clients can be directly or indirectly connected to the switch or switched network. One version includes two separate components: a Control Engine (CE); and a Forwarding Engine (FE). The Control Engine is in charge of assigning a connection to a server and forwarding information about the assigned server and connection to the Forwarding Engine. The Forwarding Engine applies the assignments received from the Control Engine to map a TCP connection onto a switched ATM connection. At the end, the Forwarding Engine communicates the connection termination event back to the Control Engine. A preferred embodiment takes advantage of the switched nature of ATM networks to shortcut paths from clients to servers, wherever possible. Using ATM shortcuts can increase performance by several order of magnitude, while providing efficient distribution of the load balancing function.

Distributed scalable device for selecting a server from a server cluster and a switched path to the selected server

Growing community of inventors

Yorktown Heights, NY, United States of America

Guerney Douglass Holloway Hunt