International Business Machines Corporation

Larry W Henson

Gregory Alan Flurry

Todd A Smith

John A Cook

Stephen P Morgan

Donavon W Johnson

Bruce R Wood

Peter James Brittenham

Amal A Shaheen-Gouda

Stephen R Kleinert

Methods, systems and computer program products are provided for managing a smart card product by providing a plurality of generic definitions, at least a portion of which have a predefined relationship to others of the generic definitions, so as to provide a hierarchy of generic definitions. Generic definitions are selected from the plurality of generic definitions and associated with an instance of a card product definition so as to define characteristics of the smart card product associated with the instance of the card product definition. The selected generic definitions are populated with data associated with the smart card product so as to provide a hierarchy of instances of the generic definitions which define the characteristics of the smart card product. The smart card product is managed utilizing the hierarchy of instances of the generic definitions so as to provide the smart card product having the defined characteristics. Systems for managing smart card products utilizing instances of definitions from the hierarchy of definitions are also provided.

Methods, systems and computer program products for smart card product management

In a multitasking data processing apparatus including means for executing processes and including a display adapter for executing functions supporting a display, the display adapter including a first port means for receiving, from the means for executing processes, requests to execute selected functions having a first execution priority, a second port means for concurrently receiving, from the means for executing processes, requests to execute selected functions having a second execution priority lower than the first execution priority, and means, coupled to the first and second port means, for executing selected functions according to the execution priority. In addition, in a multitasking data processing apparatus including means for executing processes and including a display adapter for executing functions supporting a display, a method of executing processes including the steps of receiving from the means for executing processes in a first port means requests to execute selected functions, the requests having a first execution priority, concurrently receiving from the means for executing processes in a second port means requests to execute selected functions having a second execution priority lower than said first execution priority, and executing the selected functions according to the execution priority.

Display adapter supporting priority based functions

A distributed data processing system and method in which locks on a file are supported by a data structure that resides on either a client machine or on the file's server. When only a single client's processes are locking a file, the data structure can reside on that client. Whenever a plurality of client machines attempt to place locks on a file, the data structure is moved to the server; this forces the clients locking the file to communicate with the server when performing lock operations. When a client requests a lock from the server that cannot be granted because of an existing blocking lock, the client is informed that it should put the requesting process asleep awaiting a retry notification. When there is a change in the locks on the file that might allow such a client's now sleeping process to acquire the lock, the server sends a retry notice to the client. This awakens the sleeping process at the client, and the process then reattempts the lock operation by sending a message to the server.

File lock management in a distributed data processing system

In a multitasking data processing system for executing a plurality of independent processes and including at least one peripheral device, a peripheral manager is provided that includes the capability for providing a first set of data structures where these data structures are dependent upon the peripheral device, a second data structure where the second data structures are dependent upon each of the processes in the data processing system, and the capability for providing a process access to the peripheral device by combining the accesses to the first data structure and the second data structure, as appropriate.

Rendering context manager for display adapters

A multitasking data processing system for executing a plurality of processes is provided that includes a single peripheral device addressable through two ports. A peripheral device manager is provided that includes the capability of (1) allowing access to only a single process for accessing the peripheral device and (2) the capability to provide access to a first process while simultaneously and concurrently providing access to a second process to a second port.

Rendering context manager for display adapters supporting multiple

A data processing system that includes several ongoing processes that provide input words to a buffer of an independently executing processor, a buffer manager that controls the process access to the buffer and controls the words input by the processes to the buffer that includes an apparatus for regulating the number of words from an executing first process for loading into the buffer, an apparatus for loading the number of words, an apparatus for loading a synchronization word when a second process is to be executed and an apparatus for halting the loading of the first process words and providing for loading of the second process words when the synchronization word is accessed by the independently executing processor.

First-in/first-out buffer queue management for multiple processes

A conventional single node operating system is provided with a distributed file management system (DFS) with a plurality of nodes and a plurality of files. The DFS uses the UNIX operating system tree structure employing inodes (data structure containing administrative information for each file) to manage the local files and surrogate inodes (s.sub.-- inode) to manage access to files existing on another node. In addition, the DFS uses a lock table to manage the lock status of files. The method which implements the DFS locking of records and files involves the following steps. If the file is a local file, then the UNIX operating system standard file locking is used. However, if a remote file is to be locked, the UNIX operating system LOCKF and FCNTL system calls are intercepted and an remote process call (RPC) DFS.sub.-- LOCK.sub.-- CONTROL is executed. The server node receives the remote process call and carries out the lock request. The request could entail locking a single record, a set of records or the whole file. The server then acknowledges receipt of the RPC by sending a signal while the client surrogate inode is waiting for a reply from the DFS.sub.-- LOCK.sub.-- CONTROL RPC. The client confirms the reception of the lock and sends an acknowledgement to the remote server. The server updates the lock table after receiving the acknowledgement from the client surrogate inode. If the server does not confirm the reception of DFS.sub.-- LOCK.sub.-- CONTROL's acknowledgement, then DFS.sub.-- LOCK.sub.-- CONTROL updates the lock table.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Larry W Henson