This application claims priority under 35 USC ยง119 to Finnish Patent Application No. 20021163 filed on Jun. 14, 2002.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Directing method according to this invention and concentrating on game data, is more closely described next with the help of figures, where
The action of the document handler DH, is illustrated very generally in the
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.
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.
In
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
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.
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