Abstract: Systems, machines, methods, and computer-readable media are disclosed for detecting an event at a self-checkout (SCO) machine, determining that the event is an item-identifying event, triggering capture of image data of the item identified by the item-identifying event responsive to detecting the event and/or responsive to determining that the event is an item-identifying event, and generating enhanced item identification data that associates the captured image data with identifying information of the item. The enhanced item identification data may be stored in one or more datastores, which may include a local datastore in a retail environment in which a self-checkout machine is located or a remote datastore such as cloud-based data storage.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method, system, and computer program product for failure detection with minimal bandwidth usage. A method for failure detection in a multi-node system in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention includes the steps of associating all connections between a first node and a second node with a last receipt value and a maximum idle value, calculating a difference between the last receipt value and a current time, and establishing a heartbeat connection from the first node to the second node if the difference between the last receipt value and the current time exceeds the maximum idle value. A heartbeat process is then initiated over the heartbeat connection to determine the condition of the second node.

Abstract: Method and apparatus, in a data processing system that uses JMX as a mechanism for managing internal components, for processing JMX requests to a managed group that includes a plurality of group members. When a JMX request is transmitted to a first member of a group comprising a plurality of group members, a determination is made if the first member is in an active state capable of processing the request. If the first member is not in an active state, the JMX request is forwarded to a currently active member of the plurality of members for processing the request. The invention thus permits users to communicate with the group via JMX without knowing which member of the group is active at any particular time.

Abstract: The inventive process comprises and improved process for displaying hierarchical information in a treemap by associating a different color with each nested treemap in a parent treemap, and generating a gradient for each color to preserve the representative value of varying shades. In general, a user divides the hierarchical information into clusters of nodes, designates a primary weight and a secondary weight for each cluster, and designates a base color for each cluster. The inventive process then divides the range of each cluster's secondary weight into bins, adjusts each cluster's base color to create a distinguishing gradient of the base color, assigns a distinguishing gradient to each bin, and draws a nested treemap for each cluster so that each nested treemap has a cluster's base color and each node in the cluster is represented by a bounding box having a distinct gradient of the cluster's base color.