Dynamic system configuration using an object-based client-server system

Abstract

A method and apparatus are provided to enable other system elements to obtain configuration attribute modifications from a print management system. An attribute broker provides two methods, register and advertise, to facilitate necessary configuration changes. The register method is called by other system elements to indicate an interest in a particular attribute. In registering interest in an attribute, the system element provides a callback function. The attribute broker maintains a list of all attributes that have been registered and keeps the set of callback functions for each registered attribute. Whenever a server configuration attribute is modified, the server object uses the advertise method to provide the attribute information to any system element that has registered interest in that attribute. Upon receiving the advertisement of an attribute, the attribute broker checks to see if any callback functions have been registered for that attribute. If so, the attribute broker calls each callback function. The callback function implementation then stores the configuration attribute value in a virtual memory to be used by the system elements whenever required.