Patents by Inventor Heather L. Downs

Heather L. Downs has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 6553402
    Abstract: A widely-used data definition language such as the Extensible Markup Language is used to implement a tuple space-based coordination mechanism. Entries and template entries can represent any type of networked or network-proxied resource, object or service. Using this framework, diverse entry spaces can be aggregated and operated upon as though they were a single large entry space. The flexibility and power of XML constructs can be leveraged to make such aggregation straightforward and efficient.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 5, 1999
    Date of Patent: April 22, 2003
    Assignee: Nextpage, Inc.
    Inventors: Selene K. Makarios, Robert C. Fitzwilson, Heather L. Downs
  • Patent number: 6502134
    Abstract: A mechanism for providing application-layer information persistence and exchange is provided. For an exemplary embodiment, an information space is constructed to span a group of one or more server systems. The information space is based on the tuple-space paradigm first introduced for the Linda coordination model. A coordination entity manages storage of tuples within the information space. Applications access tuples by consulting a local cache of known tuple locations. If the location of a tuple is known, access is directed to the known location. If the location is unknown, the coordination is queried to determine the correct tuple location. If a tuple has moved, the previously storing server generates a re-route exception. This causes the accessing application to query the coordination entity, retry the access, and update the local cache.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 9, 1999
    Date of Patent: December 31, 2002
    Assignee: NextPage, Inc.
    Inventors: Selene K. Makarios, Robert C. Fitzwilson, Heather L. Downs