Abstract: Disclosed is apparatus for processing business data processing activities, the apparatus comprising: an activity instance; and a descriptor for the activity instance associated uniquely with the activity instance; wherein the descriptor includes parameters for determining lifecycle behaviors of said activity instance. The descriptor may be programmable to modify the lifecycle behaviors according to a use made of said activity instance. The use of the activity instance may be responsive to a request by a client. It may also be responsive to a request by an activity instance. The descriptor may be programmable to modify the lifecycle behaviors according to a position in a system hierarchy of the activity instance.

Abstract: Control and administration of the supply of memory managed in multiple heaps by a library heap management facility. Control data used by the heap management facility is located in user-supplied memory. Heaps are created dynamically through calls from the application to a runtime library. Allocation within a heap is performed through calls to the runtime library that canvass the available heap memory for each allocation request. If no suitable block of heap memory is located, additional user supplied memory is requested for the application through a callback function. A second callback function notifies the user when a supplied unit of memory is no longer required by the heap and may be disposed of. The callback functions are specified separately for each heap. The user may also set the default heap in the runtime library by allocation requests from a vendor library that do not specify a heap.

Abstract: A portable device has an openable cover, the cover being open in normal operation. A method is provided for automatic deactivating the portable device. When the cover is detected to be in an open position and a key operated switch is in a locked position, the portable device is deactivated. The deactivation can be by means of a fusible element or by corruption of a non-volatile storage device required for the operation of the machine, such as a hard disk storing an operating system.

Abstract: The invention pertains to a computer tutorial system wherein software product training is provided interactively by guiding the user, for example, through one or more examples or applications that can be created in and/or using the product. More particularly, the invention involves a computer implemented, interactive tutorial system providing online instruction in conjunction with a contemporaneously operating software product to, for example, create such examples or applications and the tutorial system further providing for the creation of such examples or applications in and/or using the product.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer program products for relating a hyper-text markup language (HTML) document to stored information associated with the HTML document and with an application program are provided for by an association module that searches the HTML document for an association tag, wherein the association tag includes an index reference to a location of the stored information. Upon locating an association tag, the index reference is read and utilized by the association module to locate and retrieve the stored information. The stored information is then utilized by the application program. The association tag may also include a marker that uniquely identifies it as associated with the application program. In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, the stored information is both document and application specific.

Abstract: A computer workstation attached to a network such as the Internet runs browser software to access and retrieve pages of data from over the network, with the pages of data then being displayed at the computer workstation. A page of data can include a reference to code which the browser can also retrieve from over the network and then execute on the computer workstation. The reference to the code also has associated with it a reference to another file, again accessible over the network, which contains information pertaining to the code itself, such as the size of the code. The browser accesses the information in this file, prior to retrieving or executing the code. This information helps determine whether or not to retrieve the code.

Abstract: A data conferencing system includes at least two computer workstations linked by a data network. Each computer workstation is able to store and display an electronic sheet, the electronic sheet being logically divided into a set of cells, each cell being able to contain a single character. A user can select a portion of the electronic sheet, a portion comprising at least one cell, and then perform different editing operations on the selected portion of the electronic sheet. Updates resulting from editing the electronic sheet are then distributed to the other computer workstations in the data conferencing system, so that all the workstations in the data conferencing system share the same electronic sheet.

Abstract: The junction manager in the present invention eliminates the need for a separate request broker or manager and eliminates, as well, the need for each junction to propagate each state change. Instead, the state change of each object to be interconnected is reported once by the junction manager function process either located in or used by each object desiring to do so, to a shared memory space. “Processes” in each object's junction manager (we use the term process to represent processes, threads or objects themselves) which are thus logically connected or “joined”, and which may depend on one another, then query the shared memory space to obtain information about the state of a junction with another object that is of interest to them.

Abstract: A system, portable device, server, apparatus and method for controlling access to a secure location or container, or for controlling access to selected television programs or classes of programs. The invention provides a system for controlling access to a facility, comprising a portable communicating device, a server means, and one or more access control devices in communication across a network, data storage means available to said server means for storing access control data, said server means being adapted to receive access requests identifying a user of said portable communicating means and including: generating means within said server means for generating access criteria from said access control data according to said user's identity, and communicating means for communicating said access criteria to at least one of said access control means and said portable communicating means, wherein said access control means is adapted to permit access responsive to said user satisfying said access criteria.

Abstract: A method and system for providing flexibility to a license management system. A license management system permits the concurrent use of n copies of a software program over a network comprising a plurality of client workstations, each client workstation having a copy of the software program installed thereon requiring an authorization from one of a plurality of S license servers each time the software program is used. For security reasons, the license management system requires that at least the integer majority of the plurality of license servers is active at any time. The method and system allow to change the number of license servers, but impose the following limit: taken s1 and s2 respectively as the minimum and the maximum number of servers that may belong to the cluster, the sum of the integer majority of s1 and of the integer majority of s2 must be strictly greater than s2.

Abstract: Dynamically generating expanded user messages, in a computer system having a logging tool for creating a log file. The log file comprises log messages produced in response to events occurring during execution of an application program. Firstly, the application program source code is pre-analysed to extract a plurality of program components, including comments. The different component types and comments associated with them are ordered into tabular form. An individual log message is read from the log file and its program components are determined. Comments associated with these program components are read from the relationship tables. The comments are used to supplement the original log message by combining them to produce expanded user messages in a user-friendly format. These expanded user messages may be further grammatically parsed into natural language, in order to provide the end user with more meaningful diagnostic information.

Abstract: Methods of booting a client data processing system attached to a control data processing system in a data processing network. At power-on or re-boot of a client system, an initial program load request is issued from the client system onto the network and responsive to the receipt of the initial program load request at the control system, bootstrap code is transferred to the client to cause the client to boot from operating system code stored on a mass storage device of the client; alternatively, bootstrap code is transferred to the client system to cause the client to boot from operating system stored on a mass storage device of the client, or bootstrap code is transferred to cause the client system to boot from the control system.

Abstract: Provided is a data transmission method, a communications network, a mobile receiving device and data processing methods for use in broadcast of geographic information to mobile devices. The invention overcomes the problem of lack of currency of static information distribution via CD-ROM, and the problem of the cost of lengthy connections to the Internet which is a requirement of some dynamic solutions. The geographic data which is relevant to a transmitter in the network is broadcast by the transmitter as a plurality of separate data elements which each relate to and include an identification of a specific map segment of a segmented map, such that the data elements can be transmitted independently of each other and the map segment identifier can be used by the receiving device to position the geographic information of each data element within the appropriate map segment.

Abstract: Device for generating multiple quality level bit-rates in a video encoder having a motion estimator providing a predicted block for each predefined block based upon estimating the motion between the predefined block of the current image and the corresponding block in the previous image, a transformer for transforming a prediction error resulting from the difference between the predicted block and the predefined block into the frequency domain, and a quantizer for quantizing the coefficients of the prediction error and providing the quantized coefficients to a video multiplex coding unit.

Abstract: Methods, systems and computer program products for copying data between templates having data stored in fields. The field designations of the source and target template are read and compared and data is copied between fields having matching field designations. For example, each field in the target template with the same field name and field size as a field in the source template receives the data from the corresponding field of the first template. Non-matching fields are presented to a user to obtain instructions on how to complete the copying operation. The user may specify concatenation, splitting, or renaming/resizing to provide source data for the target template. Alternatively, the non-matching fields in the target template may be left empty or the user may manually enter data by using a clipboard function or keying in new data.

Abstract: A fault-tolerant transaction processing system and method stores records associated with operations of the system in order to permit recovery in the event of a need to roll back a transaction or to restart the system. At least some of the operational records are stored as a recovery log in low-speed non-volatile storage and at least some are stored as a recovery list in high speed volatile storage. Rollback of an individual transaction is effected by reference to the recovery list whereas restart of the system is effected by reference to the recovery log.

Abstract: A data processing apparatus for carrying out a specific business logic data processing task, has a plurality of business activities running on at least one data processing machine, each activity communicates with other activities via a communications protocol in order to carry out the specific business logic data processing task. At least one of the activities includes a plurality of message broker data processing nodes.

Abstract: A data processing method of testing a network of data processing units includes steps of sending a test message from an originating data processing unit to a destination data processing unit via an intermediate data processing unit; receiving at the originating data processing unit a channel definition from the intermediate data processing unit, the channel definition defining an action taken at the intermediate data processing unit to determine a next intermediate data processing unit to forward on the test message to; and displaying the channel definition at the originating data processing unit.

Abstract: A routing system comprising one or more maps; route defining means instantiable to respond to driver interaction with a map to define a proposed pooling route and to store said pooling route; request defining means instantiable to respond to passenger interaction to define a request for a pooling route; search means instantiable to search stored pooling routes for one or more pooling routes suitable for said request; and addition means responsive to passenger selection of a suitable pooling route to include a passenger on said route.

Abstract: An application server system has a constructed environment for executing application programs where the system has a plurality of processors, for receiving data from client requests and then modifying the constructed execution environment accordingly and for receiving and returning server data, and an interface for each of the processors, for receiving client request data and server data and returning server data, via the interface to/from its corresponding processor for modification of the execution environment and determination of server data to be returned. Each processor includes a receiving unit for calls containing client request data, a unit for processing the client request data and modifying the execution environment, and a unit for determining that another processor must be invoked, locating the other processor and invoking the other processor using the interface, and passing server data and client request data corresponding to the other processor.