Abstract: A passenger entertainment system operates using system software to provide services including audio and video on-demand, information dissemination, product and service order processing, and video teleconferencing and data communication. The system software routes and processes passenger transactions and dispatches resources to respond to the transactions. A database contains data relating to services provided by the system and the resources that provide the services. A processor stores object oriented application programming interface calls corresponding to the services provided by the system. The processor receives a passenger transaction requesting a particular service and processes it to generate a database query using a selected object oriented application programming interface call. A database server queries the database using the selected object oriented application programming interface call to generate an appropriate response to the passenger transaction.

Abstract: A passenger entertainment system is configured and operated using system software to route and process passenger transactions from requesting computer processors and dispatch appropriate resources to fulfill the transactions. To achieve this, passenger transactions are transmitted to a message processor, which decodes them and generates a request in a predetermined format. The request is transmitted to a transaction dispatcher that routes the request to a passenger entertainment service manager. The passenger entertainment service manager generates a response to the request message by querying files in a database. Appropriate resources are dispatched to service the passenger transactions that are defined in the response to the query.

Abstract: Line or shop replaceable units (LRUs or SRUs) of a vehicle entertainment system are programmed as microservers to receive and carry out requests for testing the LRUs/SRUs from a browser connected to the LRUs/SRUs over a communications network of the vehicle entertainment system. Test results are transmitted back to the browser for display. The browser may be part of the vehicle entertainment system or remotely connected to the communications network of the vehicle entertainment system. Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used as the protocol for transporting the requests and the execution results over the communications network, and so, the programming of the LRUs and the SRUs may be achieved with a standard HTTP server program and the browser may be any HTTP-compliant browser such as Netscape Navigator™ and Internet Explorer™.

Abstract: A vehicle entertainment system includes seat controller cards (SCCs), each being programmed with a browser and operating as a microserver for managing Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) document requests issued by the browser. When the browser requests HTTP documents that are stored in a local memory of the SCC, the microserver retrieves the HTTP document from the local memory and provides it to the browser without accessing a system file server for the vehicle entertainment system. As a result, the processing load of the system file server is decreased and the response rate to a HTTP document request is increased.