At+t Corp.

Lotus Development Corporation

Stephen Zagieboylo

R Patrick Johnson

Edward Belove

Deborah Mendez

Michael F Kraley

Sangam Pant

David M Heath

S Jerrold Kaplan

Richard A Landsman

Mitchell D Kapor

Edward J Belove

James A Culbert

O Stevens Leland, Iii

Todd R Drake

A computer architecture that permits applications resident on remote 'client' computers to communicate simply and efficiently with applications resident on a central server is disclosed. Client applications can effectively retrieve information from the server without detailed knowledge of server applications, the location of a requested data item or the particular hardware configuration of the host or even the client. A circuit manager module opens and maintains a communication circuit to the appropriate server application, supervising routing of messages from all client applications to that server application. The circuit manager also receives all incoming messages, routing them to the appropriate client applications. A client application can specify message destination in the form of a specific circuit (which requires substantial program awareness of communication patterns), or an identifier associated with the target application, or the type of information being requested from the server.

Apparatus using circuit manager to associate a single circuit with each

Disclosed is an object-oriented approach to storage and transmission of retrievable items in a client-server computer environment. Special processing modules manage retrieval and permanent storage, on client computers, of requested objects in a manner that minimizes unnecessary transmission and storage. The user enters a 'subscription' in connection with items related to hierarchically inferior items. The subscription specifies the amount of information the user desires to download and store locally with respect to a specified hierarchical depth level. The invention also includes a pruning module for deleting, from local storage, items inconsistent with the subscription and which the user does not explicitly indicate a desire to store, and a facility for updating locally stored items upon re-establishment of communication with the server.

Distributed, intermittently connected, object-oriented database and

A system for linking elements representing stored information in a data base comprising a link structure formed in a section of the data base independent of the elements, a pointer in the link structure indicating the location of a first element, and a second pointer in the link structure indicating the location of a second element. The data base contains items comprising textual data and a plurality of categories into which the items may be categorized such that each item may be linked to more than one category. The invention automatically assigns an element in a data base to a parent category if it has been assigned to a child category of the parent. The invention will allow a user to modify data in a data base in a view mode, and will resolve ambiguities by guessing as to the most likely interpretation intended by the user. The invention will allow a user to change the number or organization of categories in the data base while the user is in a view mode.

Information management system

Growing community of inventors

Norfolk, MA, United States of America

Stephen Zagieboylo