Abstract: A system and method for managing a virtual appliance lifecycle is provided. In particular, a hosted web service may provide a collaborative environment for and unified environment for developing, configuring, personalizing, building, testing, deploying, and otherwise managing a lifecycle for one or more virtual appliances, wherein the collaborative and unified environment may provide various features for-creating virtual appliances, monitoring upstream changes and modifications to the virtual appliances, and providing real-time analysis and feedback during various phases of the virtual appliance lifecycle, among other things.

Abstract: A system and method for efficiently building virtual appliances in a hosted environment is provided. In particular, a plurality of image archives may be stored in a build database, with each image archive including a file system having a directory structure and a plurality of files installed within the directory structure. In response to a build request containing an image description, a build engine may create a file system layout defining a directory structure for an image. The build engine may then copy the file system from one of the image archives to the file system layout of the image, wherein the copied file system may provide a subset of the file system for the image. The build engine may then build the image, which may include a file system having various files installed within various directories in accordance with the directory structure defined for the image.

Abstract: A system and method for efficiently building virtual appliances in a hosted environment is provided. In particular, a plurality of image archives may be stored in a build database, with each image archive including a file system having a directory structure and a plurality of files installed within the directory structure. In response to a build request containing an image description, a build engine may create a file system layout defining a directory structure for an image. The build engine may then copy the file system from one of the image archives to the file system layout of the image, wherein the copied file system may provide a subset of the file system for the image. The build engine may then build the image, which may include a file system having various files installed within various directories in accordance with the directory structure defined for the image.

Abstract: A system and method for supporting a virtual appliance is provided. In particular, a support engine may include an update server that can manage a workflow to update an appliance in response to detecting upstream updates to one or more software components that have been installed for the appliance. For example, the workflow may generally include managing a rebuild the appliance to install the upstream updates and further managing an integration test to verify that the rebuilt appliance behaves correctly with the upstream updates installed. In addition, the support engine may further include a support analysis manager that can analyze the software components that have been installed for the appliance in view of various heuristic rules to generate a support statement indicating whether support is available for the appliance.

Abstract: A system and method for inspecting a virtual appliance runtime environment is provided. In particular, runtime activity within a virtual machine may be monitored and tracked to manage a file system associated with the runtime activity. For example, a new image having a pointer to a base image being executed may be created, wherein the new image may be empty when created, and wherein data may be written to the new image in response to any files being created, deleted, modified, or otherwise accessed during execution of the base image within the virtual machine. Thus, a file system for the new image may be compared to a file system for the base image to analyze the runtime activity for the base image, wherein the new image may preserve runtime changes to the file system and provide visibility into particular runtime modifications to the file system.

Abstract: A system and method for efficiently building virtual appliances in a hosted environment is provided. In particular, a plurality of image archives may be stored in a build database, with each image archive including a file system having a directory structure and a plurality of files installed within the directory structure. In response to a build request containing an image description, a build engine may create a file system layout defining a directory structure for an image. The build engine may then copy the file system for one of the image archives to the file system layout for the image, wherein the copied file system may provide a subset of the file system for the image. The build engine may then build the image, which may include a file system having various files installed within various directories in accordance with the directory structure defined for the image.

Abstract: A system and method for efficiently building virtual appliances in a hosted environment is provided. In particular, a plurality of image archives may be stored in a build database, with each image archive including a file system having a directory structure and a plurality of files installed within the directory structure. In response to a build request containing an image description, a build engine may create a file system layout defining a directory structure for an image. The build engine may then copy the file system for one of the image archives to the file system layout for the image, wherein the copied file system may provide a subset of the file system for the image. The build engine may then build the image, which may include a file system having various files installed within various directories in accordance with the directory structure defined for the image.

Abstract: A system and method for managing a virtual appliance lifecycle is provided. In particular, a hosted web service may provide a collaborative environment for and unified environment for developing, configuring, personalizing, building, testing, deploying, and otherwise managing a lifecycle for one or more virtual appliances, wherein the collaborative and unified environment may provide various features for-creating virtual appliances, monitoring upstream changes and modifications to the virtual appliances, and providing real-time analysis and feedback during various phases of the virtual appliance lifecycle, among other things.

Abstract: A system and method for inspecting a virtual appliance runtime environment is provided. In particular, runtime activity within a virtual machine may be monitored and tracked to manage a file system associated with the runtime activity. For example, a new image having a pointer to a base image being executed may be created, wherein the new image may be empty when created, and wherein data may be written to the new image in response to any files being created, deleted, modified, or otherwise accessed during execution of the base image within the virtual machine. Thus, a file system for the new image may be compared to a file system for the base image to analyze the runtime activity for the base image, wherein the new image may preserve runtime changes to the file system and provide visibility into particular runtime modifications to the file system.

Abstract: A system and method for supporting a virtual appliance is provided. In particular, a support engine may include an update server that can manage a workflow to update an appliance in response to detecting upstream updates to one or more software components that have been installed for the appliance. For example, the workflow may generally include managing a rebuild the appliance to install the upstream updates and further managing an integration test to verify that the rebuilt appliance behaves correctly with the upstream updates installed. In addition, the support engine may further include a support analysis manager that can analyze the software components that have been installed for the appliance in view of various heuristic rules to generate a support statement indicating whether support is available for the appliance.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of observing actions performed on a computer and inferring relationships between objects based on information corresponding to the observed actions. The invention provides an initial content-based search of the desktop system to generate a list that includes a relevance ranking of objects that correspond to a search term. The content-based search result objects may be analyzed for user-action-based information and/or computer-action-based information so that an action-based association comparison may be performed between objects that are discovered during the content-based search. A re-ordering of the list of relevant content-based search result object may be performed and objects may be removed from the list of content-based search results objects. A timeline may be accessed to add action-based search result objects to the list of content-based search result objects.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of organizing search results. The invention may leverage a chronological timeline of user action information to infer relationships between objects in a search result. The search may be iterative. Search results may be graphically represented as tiles. In one embodiment, the tiles may provide a graphical representation of users associated with an object. The tiles may be updated dynamically upon user action that occurs subsequent to the search. In an alternative embodiment, search results are organized by object type and each tile represents an object within a particular object type. A default action may be associated with an object type.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of reordering conventional search results provided by a remote search engine such as Google. The invention may leverage a chronological timeline of user action information to infer relationships between objects in a search result. The search result reordering process may be iterative and does not require direct interaction by the user.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of observing actions performed on a computer and generating a timeline that includes timeline entries corresponding to the observed actions. During a computer session, the invention searches the timeline and other locations for objects that relate to target objects that are accessed by users and/or presented to users. The search produces search result objects associated with the target objects. The search result objects may be used to conduct additional searches in order to provide more complete search results.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of managing information associated with user actions. A monitoring system may gather and store information associated with user actions. Relationships may be inferred between user actions based on time or other criteria. A user may define classifications of user actions. These classifications may be used to retrieve information associated with user actions.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of searching a focal object for related objects. The invention may extract clues or information from the focal object and search the information to identify related objects. The invention also may leverage a chronological timeline of user action information to infer additional relationships with the focal object. The results may be displayed together in a graphical user interface and/or forwarded to a search result recipient. Further, an association graph may graphically depict the focal object and each related object as nodes in a graph.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of observing actions performed on a computer and inferring relationships between objects based on information corresponding to the observed actions. Relationships between the objects may be determined based on usage information and a usage pattern may be generated if the usage information recurs a selected number of times in a predetermined period of time. When a usage pattern is generated, objects may be automatically launched, icons may be automatically presented to users, and/or menu bars may be automatically configured based on established profiles.

Abstract: The invention is directed to a system and method of searching a focal object for related objects. The invention may extract clues or information from the focal object and search the information to identify related objects. The invention also may leverage a chronological timeline of user action information to infer additional relationships with the focal object. The related objects may appear on a display for a predetermined amount of time. The invention may provide icons corresponding to related object with characteristics to signify the relevance of the information.