Abstract: There are provided a hardware accelerator and method for providing hardware acceleration for an application server and/or a layer 7 switch. The hardware accelerator includes a content access memory (CAM) configured to accelerate string comparison operations in the application server and/or layer 7 switch. The string comparison operations involve strings having varying key string positions.

Abstract: The present invention uses biometrics for the quantitative determination of software ease of use by collecting biometric data from a software user, identifying changes in the biometric data as the user uses the software, determining if the changes are indicative of software ease of use issues, and generating a signal as output if the changes are determined to be indicative of software ease of use issues. The sensors may be integrated into a computer mouse or other peripheral device with which the user comes in regular contact during use.

Abstract: A system and method for ratifying policies are provided. A method for ratifying a policy in a policy-based decision system comprises: determining if a new policy interacts with an existing policy in the policy-based decision system; and ratifying the new policy to exist in the policy-based decision system.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and system for disseminating urgent public announcements over an IP-based network. One or a plurality of Internet- or Intranet-connected servers receive and store data identifying particular geographic locations to current announcements. The servers identify IP addresses of users making URL requests or requests for target applications (an access point by which a network-connectable mobile device is connected to an Internet- or Intranet-connected server), determine a location for each user from the user's IP address (or access point), and determine whether an IP address (or access point) of a user corresponds to a location for which an announcement has been posted. If the user is identified to a location for which a current announcement is available, the announcement is displayed to the user. The announcement may be displayed by redirecting the user to a web page containing the announcement.

Abstract: In one embodiment, the present invention is a method and apparatus for dynamic domain-independent system parameter configuration. One embodiment of an inventive method for modifying a current system configuration to achieve a given system objective includes receiving a new system objective. The current system configuration is then modified to achieve the new system objective by applying at least one case history representing past system behavior.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products for programmatically determining whether components of a program are suitable for deployment in particular locations such as at the edge of a network. In preferred embodiments, program characteristics and operating environment characteristics, along with information about their interactions, are programmatically combined at deployment time to determine whether application components are edgeable. The disclosed approach enables people such as programmers (who are familiar with the program characteristics) and systems administrators (who are familiar with the operating environment characteristics) to each provide some control over the edgeability determination, along with other systems experts (who know how these features interact). Alternatively, this information or portions thereof may be supplied programmatically.

Abstract: The present invention is directed to a method for propagating contextual data in an audio communication by storing the contextual data obtained from a calling party in an extensible mark-up language formatted text document. A telephone call between a first party and a second party is converted to a session initiation protocol based voice over internet protocol communication, and the stored text document is attached to session initiation protocol messages that control the voice over internet protocol communication. The document is attached to the signaling messages by embedding the text document in a session description payload associated with the session initiation protocol message. The attached document is propagated with the audio communication, including when the signaling messages are used to transfer the audio communication from the second party to a third party or to add one or more addition parties to the audio communication.

Abstract: A method (and system) for managing and controlling allocation and de-allocation of resources based on a guaranteed amount of resource and additional resources based on a best effort for a plurality of customers, includes dynamically allocating server resources for a plurality of customers, such that the resources received by a customer are dynamically controlled and the customer receives a guaranteed minimum amount of resources as specified under a service level agreement (SLA).

Abstract: Systems and methods for designing storage area network fabric. Preferably included are an arrangement for collecting user requirements on data flows to be supported by the fabric, an arrangement for grouping the data flows into flow groups according to at least one physical location parameter, an arrangement for designing components of fabric for the flow groups, the components being associated with at least one geographical region, and an arrangement for obtaining fabric by joining the fabric components via interconnection fabric, whereby flow groups over a plurality of geographical regions are supported.

Abstract: Arrangements and methods for configuring at least one computing device using at least one reference group. In a preferred embodiment, a reference group of peer devices is identified, configuration settings of the peer devices are extracted, the extracted configuration settings are analyzed and at least one configuration template is provided. A recommended configuration template is then selected for the at least one computing device.

Abstract: An integrated product data environment for system design and optimization, e.g., a Collaborative Engineering Environment (CEE). The CEE provides a multi-disciplinary engineering team with immediate access to all relevant product information. It is an enterprise system at the program as well as the company levels, managing product information as a program and corporate asset. Product-centric collaborative capabilities for the CEE are provided by extending the functionality of a commercial Product Data Management (PDM) System. Emerging web-centric commercial-off-tho-shelf (COTS) PDM capabilities, object-oriented technologies, associated rapid application development environments, sophisticated engineering toolsets, and COTS computing and communications technologies have been leveraged to establish the CEE for the complex electronic systems integration domain. The CEE offers substantial improvements in productivity, cost savings, cycle time reductions, product integrity and lifetime support of a system.

Abstract: Disclosed is a technique for performing configuration checking of a network. A network data store is scanned for at least one transaction. At least one event is generated for said transaction. At least one configuration policy is associated with said event. Said configuration policy is compared with configuration data associated with said event. It is determined whether said configuration policy has been violated based on the comparison. Also disclosed is a technique for performing proactive configuration checking of a network. A hypothetical network scenario is received. At least one transaction is generated based on the hypothetical network scenario. A network data store is populated with configuration data for said transaction. At least one event is generated for said transaction using a mapping of events to transactions. Configuration data associated with said event is used to determine whether a configuration policy has been violated.

Abstract: A method for estimating a response time by combining metrics from networking and application layers. This is achieved by placing correlation tags in data collected at these layers so that the data can later be identified as corresponding to a single web page download or a web session. Once data corresponding to a single web page download or a web session is identified, a splicing algorithm calculates client perceived response time by using analytical models of response time.

Abstract: This invention provides methods and apparatus for executing applications in a distributed manner employing one or more proxy servers and one origin server. The invention allows the applications to be executed primarily at the proxy servers rather than at the origin servers, thereby gaining in scalability and improved user response time. A redirection mechanism is used to direct requests to one of the proxy servers. The proxy server uses caching techniques to bring information records needed for application execution to the proxy servers. The code required for application execution is also obtained from the origin server. The invention discusses applying this technique to three Web-based applications, namely Web-based auctions, generating personalized content for Web-users, and creating advertisements for users accessing a Web page.

Abstract: A method, and a system applying the method, for an exact and computationally efficient solution for defuzzification uses linear and non-linear weighted wedge approaches. Fuzzy numbers are used to represent parameters in a number of applications, including design dependent parameters (DDPs) for a project in particular. A defuzzification technique is used within the domain of fuzzy logic, fuzzy set theory, and multi-valued logic to overcome the problem of the lack of absolute ordering of a fuzzy number representation. The requirement profile for the DDP (the fuzzy representation of customer requirements) is compared to the anticipation profile for the DDP (the fuzzy representation of expected performance) in three dimensions. In two dimensions, the area of overlap between the DDP requirement profile and the DDP anticipation profile represents how well the customer requirements have been met.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products for programmatically determining whether components of a program are suitable for deployment in particular locations such as at the edge of a network. In preferred embodiments, program characteristics and operating environment characteristics, along with information about their interactions, are programmatically combined at deployment time to determine whether application components are edgeable. The disclosed approach enables people such as programmers (who are familiar with the program characteristics) and systems administrators (who are familiar with the operating environment characteristics) to each provide some control over the edgeability determination, along with other systems experts (who know how these features interact). Alternatively, this information or portions thereof may be supplied programmatically.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for off-loading application components to edge servers are provided. An application is made edge-aware by defining which components of the application may be run from an edge server, and which components cannot be run from an edge server. When a request is received that is to be processed by an application on an origin server, a determination is made as to whether the application contains edgable components. If so, an edgified version of the application is created. When a request is received that is handled by a component that may be run on the edge server, the request is handled by that component on the edge server. When a request is received that is handled by a component that is not edgable, the request is passed to a proxy agent which then provides the request to a broker agent on the origin server.

Abstract: An operating system that provides protection domain support is arranged so to be compatible with “well behaved” threads, i.e., threads that obtain all their memory allocations from the operating system, that were written without regard for protection domains. This may be achieved by associating each protection domain with one or more pages of memory, so-called “primary memory pages”, for which the protection domain has read and write access permission. Requests by such a “protection-domain-unaware” thread to the operating system for a memory allocation, e.g., for memory in which to create a data structure, are automatically fulfilled by the operating system from the memory available in the primary memory pages of the protection domain of the requesting thread. The operating system informs the thread of the location of the created data structure, e.g., by passing to the thread a pointer to the data structure.

Abstract: A system, method and computer program product is disclosed for evaluating system architectures from a long term sustainability perspective, sustainability in the presence of rapidly evolving information and networking technology, rapidly evolving customer requirements and expectations, and rapidly evolving standards and protocols. The multi-attribute architecture evaluation method can include specific architectural characteristics. At the top level the present invention can include four architectural characteristics or attributes: modularity, commonality, standards-based, and reliability/maintainability/testability (RMT). The attributes can be further classified into sub-attributes and metrics to facilitate the comparative evaluation of candidate system architectures.

Abstract: Protection among threads executing in the same address space of a computer system is provided without using virtual memory techniques. This is achieved by grouping the threads into protection domains, each of the threads in a protection domain having the same rights to access memory as the other threads in that protection domain, so that each thread in a protection domain can access all the information available to the others. At least one protection domain, referred to herein as the "system" domain, which typically is the protection domain of the operating system and has unrestricted access to the entire memory, is predefined prior to execution of any threads. Prior to execution, the single address space is divided into non-overlapping pages. Each page has at least one access permission set for it. Only threads that belong to a protection domain having permission to access a page may do so.