Lucent Technologies Inc.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Robert C Pike

Kenneth Lane Thompson

Gerard J Holzmann

A method and apparatus are disclosed for maintaining and distributing configuration information for a given service by the configured service itself. The configured service controls the creation of its own configuration information, as well as updates and access thereto. Any valid and authorized updates to the configuration information may be implemented by the configured service immediately. The configured service can maintain the configuration information as a synthetic file in a hierarchical file system, for access by authorized end-users (clients). The information recorded in the configuration file can be presented, maintained and updated in the same manner as a dynamic file. Access control features of the file system can be utilized to restrict access to the configuration files and the editing tools can be used to update the configuration information. All end-users can access the same configuration information using the same dynamic file.

Method and apparatus for maintaining configuration information in a computing environment

An operating system which is particularly adapted to heterogenous distributed systems. Entities available to a process running in the operating system are provided by services. Each service models its entity as a set of files. The entity is controlled by performing operations on the set of files provided by the entity. Services other than those provided by the operating system all employ the same protocol specifying operations on files. The only requirement placed on a service by the operating system is that it be able to accept and respond to messages employing the protocol. The files are named, and the operating system provides a plurality of name spaces, relates each process to one of the name spaces, and permits any process to modify its name space or to create a new name space. Services are disclosed which provide each process using the service with its own set of the service's files and which provide files belonging to one process's namespace to another process executing on a different processor.

Distributed computing system

A system which is a combination of editor, window system, shell, and user interface and which provides a novel environment for the construction of textual applications such as browsers, debuggers, mailers, and so on. The system combines an extremely lean user interface with some automatic heuristics and defaults to achieve significant effects with minimal mouse and keyboard activity. The user interface is driven by a file-oriented programming interface that may be controlled from programs or even shell scripts. By taking care of user interface issues in a central utility, the system further simplifies the job of programming applications that make use of a bitmap display and mouse.

Global user interface

An interactive image editor. Editing commands are interactively imputted to a computer by a user to form an image transformation function. The commands define how to alter the pixels of the image and the portions of the image to alter. The editor parses the commands and generates a program for performing the image transformation. The program is then executed, either by interpreting it or by first compiling it on-the-fly. In either case, each affected pixel of the image is transformed in accordance with the command statements.

Graphics image editor

A graphic terminal is disclosed using bitmaps to represent plural overlapping displays. Graphics software is also disclosed in which the overlapping asynchronous windows or layers are manipulated by manipulating the bitmaps. With this software, the physical screen becomes several logical screens (layers) all running simultaneously, any one of which may be interacted with at any time.

Growing community of inventors

Basking Ridge, NJ, United States of America

Robert C Pike