The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 14, 1999
Filed:
Jul. 12, 1997
International Business Machines Incorporated, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
The invention concerns multimedia kiosk (newsstand) systems where single system units are interconnected via a telecommunication network. The objective is to enable updating of all information and/or the network interconnection structure between the system units during run-time. The invention solves this problem, by common dynamic management of both the configuration data and the information contents in an object-oriented database. The provision of all system functionalities as an object-oriented database enables the kiosk contents in an individual kiosk to be updated, or configuration data, e.g. network addresses to be notified-during run-time. For updating it is only necessary to transfer a so-called 'version file' at a particular point in time to one or more terminals via the network. The database operations indicated in the version file are then executed at the terminal in the background, step by step. The step by step procedure for updating the information contents of a kiosk system unit guarantees--in contrast to a total replacement of the information--shorter updating times and a lower network load, since a much smaller amount of data has to be sent. It should be emphasized that the updating of a system take place ONLINE, i.e. the kiosk application does not have to be shut down.