International Business Machines Corporation

Paul Reed

James R Giles

Louis Degenaro

James R Challenger

Rohit Wagle

Arun Kwangil Iyengar

Stephen Carl Hammer

Brian James Snitzer

Herbert Daniel Pearthree

Karen A Witting

Michael Shannon Nichols

Paul Roger Briscoe

Matthew Robert Ganis

Cameron Donald Ferstat

Gary Bob Kip Hansen

Sean Alan Harp

Cameron Ferstat

James R H Challenger

James Robert Harold Challenger

Gerald A Spivak

A distributable and serializable finite state machine and methods for using the distributable and serializable finite state machine are provided wherein finite state machine instance can be location-shifted, time-shifted or location-shift and time-shifted, for example by serializing and deserializing each instance. Each instance can be located-shifted between agents, and a persistent memory storage location is provided to facilitate both location-shifting and time-shifting. Finite state machine instances and the actions that make up each instance can be run in a distributed fashion among a plurality of agents.

Distributable serializable finite state machine

Methods, systems, and computer program products for providing a policy-based information storage management system for digital assets are provided. The storage management system includes multiple physical storage subsystems, each with deterministic storage characteristics. A method includes receiving a data item related to a subject and looking up a record for the subject. The record identifies corresponding digital assets that are stored in the storage subsystems. The method also includes applying a policy to the corresponding digital assets based upon the data item. The method further includes determining a subset of the digital assets in the record that are relevant to the data item. The relevance determination is made in response to application of the policy. The method also includes migrating the relevant digital assets to at least one designated storage subsystem, based upon corresponding storage characteristics, for expediting access to the relevant digital assets.

Methods, systems, and computer program products for providing an information storage management system

Methods and systems are provided for unified job processing of interdependent heterogeneous tasks within a domain containing a plurality of nodes. Jobs containing components to be processed in the domain are submitted and are identified by type. A job control flow associated with the job type is identified and used to process the components of the job on various nodes within the domain. Multiple job control flows are handled simultaneously, and provisions are made for sharing common job components among jobs. The job control flow utilizes a finite state machine where a given instance of the finite state machine applies to a specific job type. The finite state machine can be expressed using extensible mark-up language schema.

Unified job processing of interdependent heterogeneous tasks using finite state machine job control flow based on identified job type

A method and system for gathering enriched web server activity data in a global communications network in which requested information files are cached at a plurality of network devices. With the prevalence of web caching on the Internet, the origin web servers do not serve the majority of requests for web site content. A single pixel clear Graphics Image Format (GIF) request is added to the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) source file for a web page. Appended to the GIF request is a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) string of data that contains enhanced web activity data information, including the number of images ('hits') that have to be retrieved by a client browser to build the web page, and the referring identifier that resulted in access to the web page. The single pixel clear GIF request is not cacheable and results in the request being transmitted to the origin web server when the client browser interprets the HTML file. The enriched data is stored in log files at the origin web server to accumulate an accurate number of hits on the web page.

Gathering enriched web server activity data of cached web content

Distributable and serializable finite state machine

Finite state machines are provided to run instances of user-defined routines within a computing system. The finite state machines and updates to the finite state machines are user-defined and are checked for compliance with one or more prescribed schemas by a finite state machine engine. Compliant finite state machine specifications are interpreted for the plurality of states and transitions that constitute the finite state machine. Requested instances of a finite state machine specification are initiated by the finite state machine engine, which creates proxies to monitor the current state of any given requested instance.

Data-driven finite state machine engine for flow control

A method for constructing and publishing a plurality of objects, in accordance with the present invention, includes the steps of providing a plurality of fragments, constructing objects from the plurality of fragments, delaying publication of at least one of the objects, where the at least one of the objects includes at least one fragment belonging to a first class, to examine content, and publishing at least one of the objects including at least one of the fragments belonging to a second class without examining content. A program storage device for implementation of the present invention is also included.

Method and system for rapid publishing and censoring information

Systems and methods for publishing objects (e.g., pages and/or fragments) include assigning expiration times to different versions of objects and determining a plurality of objects which should be published atomically, that is, together in a single action. Then, the invention includes computing updated versions of the plurality of objects and atomically publishing the updated versions wherein the updated versions are not available until after expiration times corresponding to previously published versions of at least one of the plurality of objects (e.g., a cached object) have elapsed. Advantageously, clients attempting to access related cached objects over an information network such as the Internet will not be presented with versions of related objects that are inconsistent with one another.

Systems and methods for publishing data with expiration times

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Brookline, MA, United States of America

Paul Reed