Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Description of Related Art
With the rise of microprocessor-based appliances and devices, software development has clearly become a significant business. In evaluating and supporting the appliances and devices, it may be beneficial to monitor exactly how events in the appliance and device occur and how the states are changing. An example of events is an action caused by user interaction with an appliance. It may be helpful for a software developer to know which commands a user uses most often and how long those commands take to execute. Such an analysis is often referred to as “profiling.” (Analogous analysis was performed on instructions in instruction sets to develop reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instructions.) [p2] Further, in designing devices with which a human interacts, it may be desirable to monitor how the user interacts with such a device. As an example, it may be desirable to monitor how a user utilizes a control panel of an image forming device such as a photocopier, facsimile machine, printer, scanner, an appliance such as a microwave oven, VCR, digital camera, cellular phone, palm top computer, etc.
Further, it may be desirable to monitor the state of the appliances and devices to provide diagnostics, services and maintenances. Some events may be caused by the internal changes within the appliances and devices. Some events may be caused by abnormal conditions such as paper jam in the copiers. Some error conditions and warning conditions may be caused by errors in the software installed in the target appliances and devices.
Further, users are increasingly utilizing the Internet. There is significant interest in how users use the Internet, particularly with respect to how users may use certain web pages. Monitoring a user's usage of the Internet may also become significant.
It may also be desirable to determine how a user is utilizing a certain application unit (e.g., a computer running a software application, a device with an interface to be operated by a user, or a web page). The user's usage of the application unit must be monitored and effectively communicated to a remote party.
2. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a method and system that can monitor and communicate events at plural target applications of an application unit by using at least one Dynamic Linked Library (DLL) shared among the plural target applications. DLL supports multiple data formats and multiple protocols to communicated the event data. The application unit can specify at least one protocol to be used to report the information in at least one format from the application unit. Each of the at least one protocol and each of the at least one format can be defined through the interface function.
One object of the present invention is to provide a novel and effective system for monitoring events of a target application of an application unit.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a system for communicating data obtained by monitoring events of a target application of an application unit to a remote party.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a system for communicating data obtained by monitoring events of a target application of an application unit to a remote party allowing various data formats and communication protocols to facilitate the communication system configuration and received data analysis.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a system for communicating data obtained by monitoring events of a target application of an application unit to a remote party allowing various data formats that ease the analyses of received data at the receiving side.
A further object of the present invention is to efficiently communicate the monitored event information to a transmission unit.
A further object of the present invention is to efficiently verify the combination of the two parameters specifying the format and protocol and to meet the restriction requirement on the second parameter.
The present invention achieves these and other objects by monitoring the events of a target application of an application unit. Monitoring examples include (1) monitoring a software program being executed on a computer or workstation under control of a user, (2) monitoring usage of a control panel of an image forming apparatus (e.g., a copying machine, printer, facsimile, or scanner), an appliance (e.g., a microwave oven, VCR, digital camera, cellular phone, or palm top computer), (3) monitoring any internal state changes such as error conditions and warning conditions within appliances, devices and any systems and sending the results when requested or when events occur or when preset time interval occurs, (4) externally monitoring states of appliances, devices or system by polling at regular interval, and (5) generally monitoring any other device or service. The data obtained by monitoring events of a target application of an application unit, appliance, or device can, as a further feature in the present invention, be collected, logged and communicated to a desired location by a store-and-forward protocol (e.g., Internet e-mail) or a “direct” connection protocol in which a socket connection is made to an ultimate destination machine (e.g., using FTP or HTTP). The use of store-and-forward communication reduces the costs associated with communicating such data. The data can be communicated to the desired location at several instances. Such instances include each time a user exits a target application, or after a predetermined number of times that a user has utilized and exited the target application of the application unit. If the configuration allows and if necessary, the direct connection between the monitored application and the monitoring system can be established in addition to the store-and-forward communication.
A more complete appreciation of the present invention and many of the attendant advantages thereof will be readily obtained as the same becomes better understood by reference to the following detailed description when considered in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Referring now to the drawings, wherein like reference numerals designate identical or corresponding parts throughout the several views,
In
TCP/IP related communication is described, for example, in the book “TCP/IP Illustrated,” Vol. 1, The Protocols, by W. R. Stevens, from Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994, which is incorporated herein by reference. Volumes 1-3 of “Internetworking with TCP/IP” by Comer and Stevens are also incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
In
The network 52 is a conventional network and includes a plurality of workstations 56, 62, 68 and 74. These workstations may be in different departments (e.g., marketing, manufacturing, design engineering and customer service departments) within a single company. In addition to the workstations connected via the network 52, there is a workstation 42, which is not directly connected to the network 52. Information in a database stored in a disk 46 may be shared using proper encryption and protocols over the WAN 10 to the workstations connected directly to the network 52. Also, the workstation 42 includes a direct connection to a telephone line and/or ISDN and/or cable and/or wireless network 44 and the database in disk 46 may be accessed through the telephone line, ISDN, cable or wirelessly. The cable used by this invention may be implemented using a cable which typically is used to carry television programming, a cable which provides for high speed communication of digital data typically used with computers or the like, or any other desired type of cable.
Information of the business office machines, business devices or business office appliances 24, 28 and 32 may be stored in one or more of the databases stored in the disks 46, 54, 58, 64, 70 and 76. Known databases include (1) SQL databases by Microsoft, Oracle and Sybase (2) other relational databases, and (3) non-relational databases (including object oriented databases). Each of the customer service, marketing, manufacturing, and engineering departments may have their own database or may share one or more databases. Each of the disks used to store databases is a non-volatile memory such as a hard disk or optical disk. Alternatively, the databases may be stored in any storage device including solid state and/or semiconductor memory devices. As an example, disk 64 contains the marketing database, disk 58 contains the manufacturing database, disk 70 contains the engineering database and disk 76 contains the customer service database. Alternatively, the disks 54 and 46 store one or more of the databases.
In addition to the workstations 56, 62, 68, 74 and 42 being connected to the WAN, these workstations may also include a connection to a telephone line, ISDN, cable, or wireless network which provides a secure connection to the machine being monitored, diagnosed and/or controlled and is used during communication. Additionally, if one communication medium is not operating properly, one of the others can be automatically used for communication.
A feature of the present invention is the use of a “store-and-forward” mode of communication (e.g., Internet e-mail) or transmission between a machine and a computer for diagnosing and controlling the machine. Alternatively, the message which is transmitted may be implemented using a mode of communication that makes direct, end-to-end connections (e.g., using a socket connection to the ultimate destination).
There is a multi-port network interface 166 which allows the digital image forming apparatus to communicate with external devices through at least one network. Reference number 168 represents a telephone, ISDN, or cable line, and numeral 170 represents another type of network. Additional details of the multi-port network interface are described with respect to
The local connection interface 171 is a connection through local ports such as RS232, the parallel printer port, USB, and IEEE 1394. FireWire (IEEE 1394) is described in Wickelgren, I., “The Facts About “FireWire”, IEEE Spectrum, April 1997, Vol. 34, Number 4, pp. 19-25, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. Preferably, communication utilizes a “reliable” protocol with error detection and retransmission.
A storage interface 176 connects storage devices to the system bus 186. The storage devices include a flash memory 178 which can be substituted by a conventional EEPROM and a disk 182. The disk 182 includes a hard disk, optical disk, and/or a floppy disk drive. There is a connection 180 connected to the storage interface 176 which allows for additional memory devices to be connected to the digital image forming apparatus. The flash memory 178 is used to store semi-static state data which describes parameters of the digital image forming apparatus which infrequently change over the life of the copier. Such parameters include the options and configuration of the digital image forming apparatus. An option interface 184 allows additional hardware such as an external interface to be connected to the digital image forming apparatus. A clock/timer 187 is utilized to keep track of both the time and date and also to measure elapsed time.
On the left side of
A paper feed controller 196 is used to control the operation of feeding paper into and through the digital image forming device. A scanner 194 is used to scan images into the digital image forming device and includes conventional scanning elements such as a light, mirror, etc. Additionally, scanner sensors are used such as a home position sensor to determine that the scanner is in the home position, and a lamp thermistor is used to ensure proper operation of the scanning lamp. There is a printer/imager 192 which prints the output of the digital image forming device and includes a conventional laser printing mechanism, a toner sensor, and an image density sensor. The fuser 190 is used to fuse the toner onto the page using a high temperature roller and includes an exit sensor, a thermistor to assure that the fuser 190 is not overheating, and an oil sensor. Additionally, there is an optional unit interface 188 used to connect to optional elements of the digital image forming device such as an automatic document feeder, a different type of sorter/collator, or other elements which can be added to the digital image forming device.
The CPU or other microprocessor or circuitry executes a monitoring process to monitor the state of each of the sensors of the digital image forming device, and a sequencing process is used to execute the instructions of the code used to control and operate the digital image forming device. Additionally, there is (1) a central system control process executed to control the overall operation of the digital image forming device and (2) a communication process used to assure reliable communication to external devices connected to the digital image forming device. The system control process monitors and controls data storage in a static state memory (e.g., the ROM 164 of
The above details have been described with respect to a digital image forming device but the present invention is equally applicable to other business office machines or devices such as an analog copier, a facsimile machine, a scanner, a printer, a facsimile server, or other business office machines and business office appliance, or appliances (e.g., a microwave oven, VCR, digital camera, cellular phone, palm top computer). Additionally, the present invention includes other types of devices which operate using store-and-forward or direct connection-based communication. Such devices include metering systems (including gas, water, or electricity metering systems), vending machines, or any other mechanical device (e.g., automobiles) that need to be monitored during operation or remote diagnosis. In addition to monitoring special purpose machines and computers, the invention can be used to monitor, control, and diagnose a general purpose computer which would be the monitored and/or controlled device.
Another sub-system of
An alternate type of sub-system includes the use of an Internet service provider 264 which may be any type of Internet service provider (ISP), including known commercial companies such as America Online, Earthlink, and Niftyserve. In this sub-system, a computer 266 is connected to the ISP 264 through a digital or analog modem (e.g., a telephone line modem, a cable modem, modems which use any type of wires such as modems used over an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) line, ASDL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), modems which use frame relay communication, wireless modems such as a radio frequency modem, a fiber optic modem, or a device which uses infrared light waves). Further, a business office device 268 is connected to the computer 266. As an alternative to the business office device 268 (and any other device illustrated in
Also illustrated in
Another sub-system illustrated in
From the message transfer agents 312, e-mail messages are stored in user mailboxes 314 which are transferred to the mail agent 316 and ultimately transmitted to the user at a terminal 318 which functions as a receiving terminal.
This “store-and-forward” process avoids the sending mail agent 304 from having to wait until establishment of the direct connection with the mail recipient. Because of network delays, the communication could take a substantial amount of time during which the application would be unresponsive. Such an unresponsiveness is generally unacceptable to users of the application unit. By using e-mail as the store-and-forward process, retransmission attempts after failures occur automatically for a fixed period of time (e.g., three days). In an alternate embodiment, the application can avoid waiting by passing communicating requests to one or more separate threads. Those threads can then control communication with the receiving terminal 318 while the application begins responding to the user interface again. In yet another embodiment in which a user wishes to have communication completed before continuing, direct communication with the receiving terminal is used. Such direct communication can utilize any protocol not blocked by a firewall between the sending and receiving terminals. Examples of such protocols include FTP and HTTP.
Public WANs, such as the Internet, are not considered to be secure. Therefore, messages transmitted over the public WANs (and multi-company private WANs) should be encrypted to keep the messages confidential. Encryption mechanisms are known and commercially available which may be used with the present invention. For example, a C library function, crypto, is available from Sun Microsystems for use with the Unix operating system. Other encryption and decryption software packages are known and commercially available and may also be used with this invention. One such package is PGP Virtual Private Network (VPN) available from Network Associates. Other VPN software is available from Microsoft Corporation.
As an alternative to the general structure of
A further alternative structure is shown in
The transmitted messages are received by the relay MTA 328B and if desired, stored in a queue of mail 306C. The mail is then forwarded to the local MTA 322D of a receiving host 342. The mail may be placed in one or more of the user mailboxes 314 and subsequently forwarded to the mail agent 316 and finally forwarded to the user at a terminal 318. If desired, the mail may be directly forwarded to the terminal without user interaction.
The various computers utilized by the present invention, including the computers 266 and 276 of
There is a ROM 370 and a flash memory 371, although any other type of non-volatile memory (e.g., EPROM, or an EEPROM) may be utilized in addition to or in place of the flash memory 371. An input controller 372 has connected thereto a keyboard 374 and a mouse 376. There is a serial interface 378 connected to a serial device 380. Additionally, a parallel interface 382 is connected to a parallel device 384, a universal serial bus interface 386 is connected to a universal serial bus device 388, and also there is an IEEE 1394 device 400, commonly referred to as a fire wire device, connected to an IEEE 1394 interface 398. The various elements of the computer 360 are connected by a system bus 390. A disk controller 396 is connected to a floppy disk drive 394 and a hard disk drive 392. A communication controller 400 allows the computer 360 to communicate with other computers (e.g., by sending e-mail messages) over a telephone line 402 or a network 404. An I/O (Input/Output) controller 408 is connected to a printer 410 and a hard disk 412, for example using a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) bus. There is also a display controller 416 connected to a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) 414, although any other type of display may be used including a liquid crystal display, a light emitting diode display, a plasma display, etc.
One feature in the present invention is to monitor how a user uses a target application of an application unit. The term application unit in this instance refers to a system which a user interacts with and controls. A “target application” refers to a user controlled system that controls the application unit. For example, an application unit may typically be a computer and a target application may then be a software program, e.g. a word processor, running on the computer which a user operates, for example by moving a pointer on a computer screen and “clicking” on certain command icons to cause the software program to perform certain functions. In this sense, an application unit in the present invention can refer to any of workstations 17, 18, 20, 22, 56, 62, 68, 74, 42 shown in
One feature of the present invention is to monitor the user's usage of such a target application of an application unit, and to communicate data of the monitored usage. This data will typically be transmitted by e-mail by the computer interface 302 of
Another illustrative embodiment of
At a designated time, the logged data of the events is then sent to the sending block 520, which then communicates such monitored event data to a designated party. The monitoring and logging DLL 515 can be implemented in the device including the Device/Appliance 300 or in another system control element. The protocol processing system can also be implemented in the device including the application unit in
One illustrative embodiment of such a user interface 510 used with a digital image forming apparatus 26, facsimile machine 28, or printer 32 is shown in
As shown in
When the Device/Appliance 300 in
The initialize function receives a string parameter for the Application ID. The System Manager 560 calls this function when startMonitoring is called by an application 510. The function sets the Application ID, takes care of the Cumulative number of usages, reads the clock to store the start time in order to compute the elapse time and duration, and sets up the user information by examining the registry.
The initialize function receives a string parameter for the Application ID. The System Manager 560 calls this function when startMonitoring is called by an application 510. The function sets the Application ID, takes care of the Cumulative number of usages, reads the clock to store the start time in order to compute the elapse time and duration, and sets up the user information by examining the registry.
After the application 510 has completed its usage monitoring, it calls the stopMonitoring function so that the duration can be computed. If multiple sessions are stored, this function stops the recording of a corresponding session.
After initialization, the storeEvent( ) function can be called with a string parameter for the Event passed by recordEvent. The EventLogger 565 stores the event string and the elapsed time from the start time (recorded during the initialize( ) function call).
The EventLogger 565 also provides access to a getEventData function. If the stopMonitoring was not previously called (i.e., the current session's duration field is undefined), the monitoring is stopped by calling the stopMonitoring function. The stopMonitoring function computes the duration of the current session. The getEventData function returns an abstract class with the access functions shown in
The Format And Protocol Information Base System 570 (implemented as any one or a combination of package, DLL, static library, etc.) stores the format and protocol information and checks the combination of formats and protocols to determine the valid combinations. To facilitate the storage process, the storeFormatAndProtocol function accepts two parameters (i.e., one for format and one for protocol). The function checks to ensure that the parameters are a valid combination.
The component 570 also includes a getFormatAndProtocolVector function returns a format and associated vector of protocols. In one embodiment, the function performs error checking. For example, if a protocol allows only one format to be sent, then the format should be the last format in the function call of selectFormatProtocol. The return value is a boolean value where true indicates that valid parameters were returned and false indicates that no more data is available. The return parameters are int and vector of int. The first int refers to the format while the vector of int refers to the vector of protocols for the format. When there is no selectFormatProtocol function call, the getFormatAndProtocolVector returns the default setting. Also would be evident, other collections (e.g., a list template) may be used in place of a vector.
The Data Format Processor 575 is responsible for formatting event data into a specified format. One exemplary function is the formatEventData function that receives a pointer to the abstract class EventData. The return value is a pointer to the abstract class FormattedEventData. Generally, interface to the FormattedEventData abstract class is defined as in
The Protocol Processor 580 is responsible for outputting the formatted event data through the specified protocol. In one embodiment, the processor 580 also encrypts the body of message. To output the data, the processFormattedData function is called with an input pointer to the abstract class FormattedEventData. The function returns a boolean value where “true” represents no errors, and “false” represents the existence of an error while processing the formatted data.
The System 585 supplies important information and persistent information across the execution of the DLL. Some of the important information is timer information through the library call. The registry to keep the necessary information is another important component of the System 585. Many registry entries are set up at installation time. An exemplary structure for the registry is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE--SOFTWARE--RicohMonitor--XXX(ApplicationID)
Where XXX represents the Application ID, the following variables are placed in the registry under XXX tree: CumulativeUsage, UserID, SMTP Server, Recipients, From, FTP Server, FTP User, FTP Password, FTP Target Path etc. In one embodiment, CummulativeUsage is an integer, and the rest of the variables are strings.
The CMonitorManager coordinates subsequent communication between the other computer code devices. The first such communication is in response to a getEventData request made by the CMonitorManager. In step 5, CMonitorManager obtains a format and associated vector of protocols from CformatAndProtocolInformationBase. Later, step 6, entitled “CreateDataFormatProcessor,” creates the data formatter for the selected formatting that is used to format the monitored event data in step 7. Step 8 obtains the protocol processor specified by the application software before stopping monitoring. Together, steps 6 and 8 show that the formatters and protocol processors can be created dynamically (i.e., only when they are needed). In addition, created protocol processors can be cached in the CProcessorBuilder.
While the above discussion has generally focused on using a single protocol and/or a single data format, in an alternate embodiment, the present invention utilizes plural protocols and/or plural data formats. Those protocols and formats can include, but are not limited to any of the protocols and formats discussed herein, Exemplary formats include, but are not limited to, uncompressed or compressed versions of any one of: un-delimited text, SGML, XML, HTML, csv format, and binary. This enhances the number of possible ways that data can be transferred to support the monitoring of the present invention. Accordingly, one implementation of the application sends at least one (format, protocol) pair to be used by the computer code device (e.g., DLL). The computer code device checks that each pair is valid before storing it in the data structure of two maps. For example, if the format specifies the binary encoding of fixed format, but the protocol is SMTP with the plain text encoding in the mail body, the format and protocol are not a valid pair/combination. Before the monitored data are sent out, the computer code device checks if a selected protocol is restricted to support only one format. Two maps are used for this purpose. Then, the system utilizes the specified data format one at a time to generate the required format and sends out the generated data over all the protocol specified for this data format.
The present invention is also applicable to implementations where two different kinds of parameters are specified multiple times where the first parameter processing is more costly than the second parameter processing. In addition, the some second parameter values may be restricted to supporting only one first parameter value that is specified last. In such a case, the present invention technique can be utilized to process the system efficiently.
Obviously, numerous modifications and variations of the present invention are possible in light of the above teachings. It is therefore to be understood that, within the scope of the appended claims, the invention may be practiced otherwise than as specifically described herein.
Deposit of Computer Program Listings
Not Applicable
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