Unisys Corporation

Robert J Gambrel

Daniel P Starkovich

Joey L Erickson

Mark V Deisinger

Scott L Rappa

Grant T Nelson

An apparatus for and method of processing service requests having a number of formats within a single generic gateway. The service requests are received by the server and routed to the appropriate one of a number of adapters. Each of the adapters convert service requests to a standardized format for input to the single generic gateway. The output of the single generic gateway is coupled through a corresponding one of a number of connectors to the end service provider for honoring.

Adapter architecture

Method and apparatus for providing a user customizable help system for a data processing environment which utilizes a graphical interface to identify solutions and/or topics of interest. This graphical help system displays partitioned groupings of help topics organized in a intuitively functional, positional manner such that a user will instinctively know where to find the desired help topic. These partitioned groupings of help topics preferably represent hardware platforms, operating environments, application groupings, or groupings of functions within an application. Further, and within each of the partitioned groupings, the invention contemplates providing multiple &ldquo;views&rdquo; of help topics, each &ldquo;view&rdquo; corresponding to a different type of user of the data processing system. By providing multiple views, the help system can be easily tailored to better address differences in experience, sophistication, and job requirements between widely disparate users of the same data processing system.

Graphical table of contents for a help system

Apparatus and method which allows a user to dynamically gather Web Site status information from a Web Browser. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention allows a user to gather information on which Web Pages within a Web Site have been recently updated. The present invention utilizes a workstation-based custom gateway to interconnect a user's Web Browser to the Web Server which hosts the Web Site. This gateway includes a program which receives a user-tailorable search request from a Web Browser, traverses a portion of the Web-accessible file structure of the Web Server, identifies Web Site files which meet the search request criteria, builds a table of results from the search, and returns the search results to the Web Browser. The present invention also allows an administrator to customize the table of results returned to the Web Browser.

Gateway for dynamically providing web site status information

Method and apparatus for a new interface architecture which reduces the number of software components required to interface a variety of requester types coupled to a server with a variety of communications programs coupled to an on-line transaction processing system. The new interface architecture isolate attributes of the requesters and the communication programs into individual software components so that all software code associated with each requester type is included within a corresponding requester software module, and all software code associated with each communications program is included within a corresponding communications software module. Each new requester type added requires the addition of only one requester software module, and each new communications program added requires the addition of only one communications software module, thus reducing the overall number of software modules required to interface the variety of requester types to the variety of communications programs.

Growing community of inventors

Spring Lake Park, MN, United States of America

Robert J Gambrel