International Business Machines Corporation

Salvatore D'Alo

Alessandro Donatelli

Claudio Marinelli

Arcangelo Di Balsamo

Scot MacLellan

Antonio Perrone

Giovanni Lanfranchi

Alex Donatelli

Alessandro Scotti

Gianluca Bernardini

Giulio Santoli

Alessandro Scott

A method () for planning assignment of floating licenses of software products is proposed. Floating licenses can be requested to a runtime server by multiple workstations (to which they are assigned until a maximum number of instances of the product are running concurrently). In the solution of the invention, a user of every workstation needing to run the product in a future timeframe submits () a corresponding reservation request to the runtime server. If at least one license is available for the selected timeframe, the runtime server reserves () the license to the workstation (so as to prevent assigning it to other workstations for the same period); at the same time, a corresponding temporary permission is stored () on the workstation. In this way, the product can be used (-) during the selected timeframe on the workstation only; this is possible without any risk even if the workstation is disconnected from the runtime server.

Planning assignment of software licenses

A method and a corresponding apparatus for managing software licenses on a plurality of computer are proposed. The present method and system aim at populating a software catalog without the manual intervention of an administrator. The present invention reduces the cost of producing and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base (the catalog) which contains definitions of software products and the related use signature. Information about software products and their related signature is obtained through a process which gathers information with an automated process which takes an initial snapshot of all processes running on a monitored data processing system and makes a comparison with a final snapshot after execution of a software product has been started. A 'use signature' of the software product is then generated according to the difference.

Method and apparatus for populating a software catalog with automated use signature generation

A method, system, and product for monitoring the availability of a data processing system are proposed. The system runs a management application involving the periodic transmission of blocks of data from multiple local computers to a central computer. Whenever a block of data must be transmitted by a generic local computer, an expected transmission delay of a next block of data (with respect to the current one) is estimated and attached to the block of data. The central computer receiving the updated block of data can calculate an expected receiving time of the next block of data accordingly. If the next block of data is not received in due time, the central computer determines a failure of the local computer. The central computer also scans a subset of ports of the local computer, to ascertain whether the problem is due to a temporary unavailability of the application.

Method for monitoring data processing system availability

A self-adaptive resource management method () is proposed. The system is based on an authority () that publishes multiple rules into a corresponding repository (). Each rule defines a desired target configuration for a category of subjects (); each category is specified by one or more attributes that are evaluated by corresponding scanners (-). Whenever new rules are published, a dedicated module () creates and publishes further rules for selectively installing the scanners that are required for evaluating the attributes included in the categories of the new rules. These further rules are defined according to an algorithm that attempts to minimize the cost involved by the installation of the scanners.

Adaptive method and system with automatic scanner installation

A solution () for tracking computer software development (for example, based on UML diagrams) is proposed. In the solution of the invention, a completion coefficient is associated () with each activity concerning the development process (to indicate the effort required to complete it). The activities are organized into a tree (starting from a root node for the whole development process). In operation, a user tunes (-) a progress index for each micro-activity represented by a leaf node of the tree (to indicate its actual progress). The progress index of each macro-activity represented by a non-leaf node of the tree is instead calculated (-) by aggregating the progress indexes of its depending activities weighted according to the respective completion coefficients (with a recursive process down to the micro-activities). In this way, the progress of the development process can be tracked with an incremental approach at different levels of detail.

Method, system and computer program for tracking software development

A self-adaptive resource management method and a corresponding system. An authority publishes multiple rules into a corresponding repository. Each rule defines a desired target configuration for a category of subjects. Some rules are also associated with a corresponding stage in a predefined flow of application of the rules. A supervisor publishes the value of a current stage into a workflow repository. Each subject retrieves and applies the rules for its category and corresponding to the current stage. Information about the compliance of the subjects with the corresponding rules is published in a membership data repository. The supervisor detects the completion of the current stage when the subjects are compliant with the corresponding rules, and updates the value of the current stage to start a further stage.

Adaptive management method with workflow control

In an autonomic management method for self-configuring a subject entity in a data processing system, the subject entity retrieves, from a set of rules published by an authority entity, one or more rules corresponding at least one category of the subject entity. Each rule defines a desired state for a category, and at least one retrieved rule includes at least one formal parameter defining a correlation with at least one further category. For each retrieved rule, the subject entity resolves each formal parameter included in the retrieved rule by associating each further category specified in the formal parameter with at least one further subject entity belonging to the further category. The subject entity also applies the retrieved rule to configure the subject entity according to the desired state specified in the retrieved rule.

Automatic management method and system with category-based correlations

A self-adaptive resource management method () is proposed. The method is based on an authority () that publishes multiple rules into a corresponding repository (). Each rule defines a desired target configuration for a category of subjects (); each category is specified by one or more attributes that are evaluated by corresponding scanners (-). Whenever new rules are published, a dedicated module () creates and publishes further rules for selectively installing the scanners that are required for evaluating the attributes included in the categories of the new rules. These further rules are defined according to an algorithm that attempts to minimize the cost involved by the installation of the scanners.

Adaptive management method with automatic scanner installation

A method for monitoring the availability of a data processing system is proposed. For example, the system runs a management application, which involves the periodic transmission of blocks of data from multiple local computers to a central computer. In the method of the invention, whenever a block of data must be transmitted by a generic local computer, an expected transmission delay of a next block of data is estimated; this information is then attached to the block of data. As a result, the central computer receiving the updated block of data can calculate an expected receiving time of the next block of data accordingly. If the next block of data is not received in due time, the central computer determines a failure of the local computer. Preferably, the central computer also scans a subset of ports of the local computer, so as to ascertain whether the problem is due to a temporary unavailability of the application or to an actual crash of the local computer.

A method () and system for monitoring distributed applications (for example, running on multiple WAS nodes of a cluster) is proposed. The solution of the invention is based on a self-adaptive resource management infrastructure. Particularly, an authority publishes (-) a plurality of rules, each one defining a desired target configuration for a category of subjects. A membership controller on each subject is responsible to assign (-) the subject to the respective category; a compliance engine then retrieves and applies (-) the rules corresponding to the category of the subject. The resource management infrastructure is used to implement a monitoring on-demand of the distributed application. For this purpose, two rules are defined (-) for the WAS nodes having the distributed application in a running condition and in a non-running condition, respectively. Each WAS node having the distributed application in the running condition applies (-) the first rule, so as to start the monitoring application; as soon as the distributed application switches to the non-running condition, the WAS node applies (-) the second rule, so as to stop the monitoring application automatically.

Growing community of inventors

Rome, Italy

Salvatore D'Alo