Method for directing data to a user application and related terminal and system

Abstract

A method, a system and a terminal for processing data, wherein the data is transmitted from the external memory device being part of a system, to the terminal, wherein the data content is recognized by means of the new field added to the application area data file and basing on that, directed to an application area specific handler, where a new media type is generated by concatenating a identification of the data to a public and registered application area specific media type, and used to get the user application for the content and a directory where the content is saved to.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] This application claims priority under 35 USC §119 to Finnish Patent Application No. 20021163 filed on Jun. 14, 2002.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0002] This invention relates to a method for processing data in a system comprising a wireless terminal and an external memory device, and to a method for processing data in the wireless terminal. In said method additional data stored in the external memory device and registered with general type information is transmitted to the wireless terminal, where it is recognized and directed to an application handler and further to its own directory. In addition, this invention relates to a data processing system and to a wireless device being part of said system, said system comprising also an external memory device and said wireless device comprising means for recognizing and directing the data to the actual user application.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0003] Applications, e.g. games, in wireless communication devices have developed over the years so that it is possible to download additional content stored in an external memory through a communication network. Downloadable data file can comprise, for example in games, additional levels or new characters. In this description the term data refers to a content which can be downloaded from the network and be processed in the terminal and which is defined by a media type, preferably by MIME-type. Also this description is limited to the game data processing, but the processing method according to the invention is also adaptable to the other application areas.

[0004] It will be evident to the person skilled in the art, that additional data is mainly stored in the server or in another memory device outside of the wireless device, which reduces the load of the wireless device's memory. Being able to download the additional data to his own terminal, the user has to have a data transmission connection with said external memory device, which stores said data to be selected by the user and transmitted to his terminal. Game content will be saved into the memory of the terminal in binary format and the content-specific application performs needed functions for presenting the content data in its actual form to the user, for example on the display of the terminal.

[0005] In data transmission, the recognition of the data content is based on the MIME-type (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). MIME-type describes the media type of the data transmitted through the communication network. Each new MIME-type must be registered in the Application Information File (AIF), which stores all the application-supported MIME-types and a priority value defined for each MIME-type. Priority value defines the application, which is primarily used by the data with the MIME-type in question. In some environments each MIME-type has its own recognizer for defining the content. Content recognition is needed for directing the data being attached to the actual application.

[0006] For the reason that each game is an independent application, the game data should be registered with its own MIME-type according to the prior art. Due to this, every application must provide MIME-type handling by itself. Because games are the most favorite applications in the wireless communication arena the registration and handling of each data content requires too much work by and memory capacity of the wireless device.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0007] Main idea of this invention is to have one public MIME-type for all the data in the application area. When content with this media type, e.g. a game, is received, the recognizer defines the application area handling said media type and then content is transmitted to the application handler. Therefore the recognizer is independent of the data type and name. The application handler defines more accurately the application in question by extracting the identification part of the data. After this the handler copies the content of the file to the directory belonging to the application. Content is this way definable by means of one common recognizer and one common handler, which saves the memory of the phone. In addition, the slow registration of the MIME-types and MIME-supported recognizers is not needed because it is adequate for having one author to control the correspondence between ID-numbers and data files. Public MIME-typing creates well-defined frames for the future applications. Data format is shared between different communication devices, which enables compatibility between different devices and applications.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0008] Directing method according to this invention and concentrating on game data, is more closely described next with the help of figures, where

[0009] FIG. 1 illustrates the action of the document handler in simplified form,

[0010] FIG. 2 describes the form of the game data according to invention, and

[0011] FIG. 3 illustrates the game data processing according to invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0012] The action of the document handler DH, is illustrated very generally in the FIG. 1. References to the functions in the FIG. 1 are presented in the text by numbers in parentheses.

[0013] In general, the document handler DH, is a utility to direct and to save content to an actual application based on a MIME-type and also to launch the application if needed. Document handler DH receives (1) for example in a WML-browser the content originated from data WML, multimedia messages MMS, mail attachments MAIL or data received through Infrared or Bluetooth. After this content is directed to and stored (2) in the application data directory. Downloaded content is performed in the actual application, e.g. photo album PH, recorder VR or notepad NP, launched during the storing. Downloaded content can also only be stored in the application directory, from where the application (game etc) detects it and picks it for use.

[0014] In detail, document handler DH uses through an interface application-specific handlers specialized for particular MIME-types i.e., by means of document handler DH the complex architecture of the process of content handling is hid. It can be mentioned, that document handler DH depends heavily on standard MIME-type recognition because finding the content-specific handler for each data is based on the MIME-types. Document handler DH provides an interface for storing the content into a directory of an actual application in its own form. Document handler DH takes care of necessary tasks occurring in the storage: finding the correct place for saving a file, offering a simple function for saving and naming unnamed buffers. The document handler DH is capable of storing data to the correct place, if the application developer has declared the game directory with the register SDC. The role of register SDC is to store key-value-pairs behind the common interface SD that for example the key application/x-NokiaGameData-<10189> provides an application and directory of the game 10189.

[0015] In FIG. 2 the game data file structure is presented. GameID is a unique number identifying each game. Data Type distinguishes the levels, the weapons, the characters etc for the game. Data length defines the size of the following field as 32-bit number. Size of the Name String -field defines the size of the name field in Unicode characters. Name String is the Unicode string, which is a name of the game in textual format and is seen for example in game menu. Data ID -field illustrates the unique 32-bit number identifying the data content. Data version is a number for allowing the compatibility checking by the game. Typical use is to use different versions for different size displays. NGDX Header acts as identification for the game data. Recognition according to invention is based on this field.

[0016] FIG. 3 illustrates how the game data file is directed to the directory of the application according to the invention. When game G is installed to the communication device it should be registered with a MIME-type, which is unique for each game (and other applications). MIME-type is formed as application/x-NokiaGameData-<GameID> (GameID in FIG. 2). During the installation the game registers its directories into the application register SDC. Registration 0 is made substantially only once.

[0017] Game data file is downloaded from the client application C in the server to be used by the game application. During the installation the game data file has registered the MIME-type, which is uniform between different games and different contents. Without said public MIME-type, in this point own recognizer for the data MIME-type should be registered for the terminal as well. Downloaded game data file is directed (1) to the document handler DH, which needs a description of the data content. This means, that the public MIME-type for games, application/x-NokiaGameData, should be recognized that the document handler DH can direct the content to the game handler GH. Document handler DH asks (2) the application architecture AA for the recognition. Application architecture AA comprises application classes AL, where recognizing class is comprised of different MIME-type recognizers. Game recognizer GR reacts (3) for the NGDX-field of the data file said NGDX-field locating only in the game data file. By this it is known that the downloaded file includes game content. This information is transmitted (4-5) to the document handler DH, which now can direct (6) it to the game handler GH. When the data is received the game is identified (7) by the game handler GH. The game handler GH gets the unique identification of the game, GameID, from the data file, which is then concatenated at the end of public MIME-type. Concatenated MIME-type, application/x-NokiaGameData-<GameID>, is used to find (8-9) the application and the directory through the interface SD. Downloaded game data is then stored (10) into the application directory and launched in the actual application. Default Handler DfH in the FIG. 3 receives the data, which is not agreeing with the common format, and performs the needed handling.

[0018] It should be evident that this invention is not limited only to the embodiment described above and it can be adapted within the relating claims.

Claims

1. A method for processing data in a terminal, said method comprising steps of receiving data and storing data for the use of an application, wherein the method also comprises the steps of recognizing an application area of the data by a field added to a data file, directing the data to an application area specific handler, generating a new media type for recognized data by concatenating an identification of the data with a registered application area specific media type, and searching, by means of generated media-type, a user application and a directory for content.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said application area relates to game applications.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the said terminal is a mobile phone or other hand-held equipment being capable of wireless communication.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the media type is MIME-type.

5. A method for processing data in a system, which comprises a wireless terminal and a memory device, said method comprising steps of setting up a data transmission connection between said wireless terminal and the memory device, wherein the method also comprises steps of transmitting data from the memory device to the terminal through said data transmission connection, said data being defined by an application area specific media type, transmitting the data from the memory device to the terminal through said data transmission connection, said data in a format comprising an identification field for identifying an application area, recognizing the application area of the transmitted data by the identification field and directing the data to an application area specific handler, generating a new media type for content in said terminal by concatenating identification of the data with the application area specific media type, and searching, by means of generated media type, a user application and directory for the content in the said terminal.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the said data transmission connection operates in a wireless communication network.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the said application area relates to game applications.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein the said terminal is a mobile phone or other hand-held equipment being capable of wireless communication.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein the said memory device is a server or other data processing device capable of storing data.

10. The method of claim 5, the said media type is MIME-type.

11. A data processing system comprising a wireless terminal and a memory device, said system adapted to transmit data stored memory device through a communication network to the wireless terminal and store the transmitted data to an application specific directory in the terminal, wherein the system comprises recognizer in said terminal for recognizing an application area of the data based on an identification field added to the data, application area specific handler in said terminal for generating a new media type for recognized content by concatenating identification of the data with an application area specific media type and searching, by means of a generated media type, an application-specific directory and a user application.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein said communication network is wireless.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein said application area relates to game applications.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the said terminal is a mobile phone or other hand-held equipment being capable of wireless communication.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the said memory device is a server or other data prosessing device capable of storing data.

16. The system of claim 11, the said media type is MIME-type.

17. A terminal in a data processing system, said terminal having a data transmission connection with a memory device, wherein the terminal comprises a recognizer for recognizing an application area of the data, said recognizer is adapted to recognize the data by an identification field added to the data, the terminal further comprises an application area specific handler for directing the data to a directory of the application for processing in a user application, said application area specific handler adapted to generate a new media type to recognized content by concatenating identification of the data with an application area specific media type and searching, by means of generated media type, an application-specific directory and the user application.

18. The terminal of claim 17, wherein said application area relates to the game applications.

19. The terminal of claim 17, wherein it is a mobile phone or other hand-held equipment being capable of wireless communication.

20. The terminal of claim 17, wherein said media type is MIME-type.