Method and apparatus for proximity discovery of services Number:7,412,518 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) owispatent A service discovery protocol may allow clients to discover services on a proximity basis. A service device that provides one or more computing services may support a proximity communication link. A client device may form a proximity communication link with the service device. The client device may directly request from the service device a document that describes an interface to access a service provided by the service device. The service device may provide the document directly to the client device over proximity communication link. The document may include a service advertisement for the service, and the service advertisement may include a schema specifying an interface to at least a portion the service. The client device may use the information from the document to access the service. The client device may support a transport connection in addition to the proximity communication link, and the client device may make the document available to other devices over the transport connection. Thus, the client device may provide a bridge from the transport connection to the proximity communication link so that other devices from a distributed computing environment may access the service.<H discovery, proximity, Method, and, appa, 7412518.html, Patent, pto, 7412518

Title: Method and apparatus for proximity discovery of services

Abstract: A service discovery protocol may allow clients to discover services on a proximity basis. A service device that provides one or more computing services may support a proximity communication link. A client device may form a proximity communication link with the service device. The client device may directly request from the service device a document that describes an interface to access a service provided by the service device. The service device may provide the document directly to the client device over proximity communication link. The document may include a service advertisement for the service, and the service advertisement may include a schema specifying an interface to at least a portion the service. The client device may use the information from the document to access the service. The client device may support a transport connection in addition to the proximity communication link, and the client device may make the document available to other devices over the transport connection. Thus, the client device may provide a bridge from the transport connection to the proximity communication link so that other devices from a distributed computing environment may access the service.

Patent Number: 7,412,518 Issued on 08/12/2008 to Duigou, et al.

Inventors: Duigou; Michael J. (Fremont, CA), Abdelaziz; Mohamed M. (Santa Clara, CA), Traversat; Bernard A. (San Francisco, CA), Saulpaugh; Thomas E. (San Jose, CA), Slaughter; Gregory L. (Palo Alto, CA)
Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA)

Appl. No.: 09/656,588

Filed: September 7, 2000

Related U.S. Patent Documents


Application Number	Filing Date	Patent Number	Issue Date
60209525	Jun., 2000
60209140	Jun., 2000
60209430	Jun., 2000
60208011	May., 2000
60202975	May., 2000

Current U.S. Class: 709/227 ; 709/217; 709/238; 726/5

Current International Class: G06F 15/16 (20060101); G06F 15/173 (20060101); G06F 7/00 (20060101)

Field of Search: 709/218,227,228,238,217 715/513 713/156 726/4,5

References Cited [Referenced By]

U.S. Patent Documents


4491946	January 1985	Kryshow, Jr. et al.
4713806	December 1987	Oberlander et al.
4809160	February 1989	Mahon et al.
4823122	April 1989	Mann et al.
4939638	July 1990	Stephenson et al.
4956773	September 1990	Saito et al.
5088036	February 1992	Ellis et al.
5109486	April 1992	Seymour
5187787	February 1993	Skeen et al.
5218699	June 1993	Brandle et al.
5257369	October 1993	Skeen et al.
5293614	March 1994	Ferguson et al.
5297283	March 1994	Kelly, Jr. et al.
5307490	April 1994	Davidson et al.
5311591	May 1994	Fischer
5339435	August 1994	Lubkin et al.
5386568	January 1995	Wold et al.
5390328	February 1995	Frey et al.
5423042	June 1995	Jalili et al.
5440744	August 1995	Jacobson et al.
5448740	September 1995	Kiri et al.
5455952	October 1995	Gjovaag
5459837	October 1995	Caccavale
5481721	January 1996	Serlet et al.
5548726	August 1996	Pettus
5557798	September 1996	Skeen et al.
5640564	June 1997	Hamilton et al.
5644768	July 1997	Periwal et al.
5652888	July 1997	Burgess et al.
5655148	August 1997	Richman et al.
5659751	August 1997	Heninger
5671225	September 1997	Hooper et al.
5675796	October 1997	Hodges et al.
5724588	March 1998	Hill et al.
5737607	April 1998	Hamilton et al.
5745678	April 1998	Herzberg et al.
5745695	April 1998	Gilchrist et al.
5745703	April 1998	Cejtin et al.
5745755	April 1998	Covey
5748897	May 1998	Katiyar
5754849	May 1998	Dyer et al.
5757925	May 1998	Faybishenko
5758077	May 1998	Danahy et al.
5761656	June 1998	Ben-Shachar
5764897	June 1998	Khalidi
5768532	June 1998	Megerian
5774551	June 1998	Wu et al.
5778187	July 1998	Monteiro et al.
5778228	July 1998	Wei
5778368	July 1998	Hogan et al.
5787425	July 1998	Bigus
5787431	July 1998	Shaughnessy
5790548	August 1998	Sistanizadeh et al.
5802367	September 1998	Held et al.
5808911	September 1998	Tucker et al.
5809507	September 1998	Cavanaugh, III
5813013	September 1998	Shakib et al.
5815149	September 1998	Mutschler, III et al.
5815709	September 1998	Waldo et al.
5815711	September 1998	Sakamoto et al.
5818448	October 1998	Katiyar
5829022	October 1998	Watanabe et al.
5832219	November 1998	Pettus
5832529	November 1998	Wollrath et al.
5832593	November 1998	Wurst et al.
5835737	November 1998	Sand et al.
5842018	November 1998	Atkinson et al.
5844553	December 1998	Hao et al.
5845129	December 1998	Wendorf et al.
5860004	January 1999	Fowlow et al.
5860153	January 1999	Matena et al.
5864862	January 1999	Kriens et al.
5864866	January 1999	Henckel et al.
5872928	February 1999	Lewis et al.
5872973	February 1999	Mitchell et al.
5875335	February 1999	Beard
5878411	March 1999	Burroughs et al.
5884024	March 1999	Lin et al.
5884079	March 1999	Furusawa
5887134	March 1999	Ebrahim
5890158	March 1999	House et al.
5892904	April 1999	Atkinson et al.
5933497	August 1999	Beetcher et al.
5935249	August 1999	Stern et al.
5940827	August 1999	Hapner et al.
5944793	August 1999	Islam et al.
5946485	August 1999	Weeren et al.
5946694	August 1999	Copeland et al.
5966531	October 1999	Skeen et al.
5969967	October 1999	Aahlad et al.
5987506	November 1999	Carter et al.
5999179	December 1999	Kekic et al.
6003763	December 1999	Gallagher et al.
6009103	December 1999	Woundy
6016496	January 2000	Roberson
6016500	January 2000	Waldo et al.
6026414	February 2000	Anglin
6031977	February 2000	Pettus
6061699	May 2000	DiCecco et al.
6061713	May 2000	Bharadhwaj
6182083	January 2001	Scheifler et al.
6185611	February 2001	Waldo et al.
6216158	April 2001	Luo et al.
6321257	November 2001	Kotola et al.
6341353	January 2002	Herman et al.
6356761	March 2002	Huttunen et al.
6398245	June 2002	Gruse et al.
6405027	June 2002	Bell
6457066	September 2002	Mein et al.
6473626	October 2002	Nevoux et al.
6532368	March 2003	Hild et al.
6618764	September 2003	Shteyn
6633757	October 2003	Hermann et al.
6792605	September 2004	Roberts et al.
6795429	September 2004	Schuster et al.
6952800	October 2005	Danner et al.
6982962	January 2006	Lunsford et al.
7043532	May 2006	Humpleman et al.
7188251	March 2007	Slaughter et al.

Foreign Patent Documents


300 516	Jan., 1989	EP
351 536	Jan., 1990	EP
384 339	Aug., 1990	EP
472 874	Mar., 1992	EP
474 340	Mar., 1992	EP
497 022	Aug., 1992	EP
555 997	Aug., 1993	EP
565 849	Oct., 1993	EP
569 195	Nov., 1993	EP
625 750	Nov., 1994	EP
651 328	May., 1995	EP
660 231	Jun., 1995	EP
697 655	Feb., 1996	EP
718 761	Jun., 1996	EP
767 432	Apr., 1997	EP
778 520	Jun., 1997	EP
794 493	Sep., 1997	EP
803 810	Oct., 1997	EP
803 811	Oct., 1997	EP
805 393	Nov., 1997	EP
810 524	Dec., 1997	EP
817 020	Jan., 1998	EP
817 022	Jan., 1998	EP
817 025	Jan., 1998	EP
836 140	Apr., 1998	EP
2 253 079	Aug., 1992	GB
2 262 825	Jun., 1993	GB
2 305 087	Mar., 1997	GB
11-45187	Oct., 1997	JP
92/07335	Apr., 1992	WO
92/09948	Jun., 1992	WO
93/25962	Dec., 1993	WO
94/03855	Feb., 1994	WO
96/03692	Feb., 1996	WO
96/10787	Apr., 1996	WO
96/18947	Jun., 1996	WO
96/24099	Aug., 1996	WO
98/02814	Jan., 1998	WO
98/04971	Feb., 1998	WO

Other References

Ruggaber et al. "Using WAP as the Enabling Technology for CORBA in Mobile and Wireless Environments", Dec. 1999, Distributed Computing Systems, 1999, Proceedings, 7th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of, pp. 69-74. cited by examiner .
Hodes et al., "Composable ad hoc Location based Services for Heterogeneous Mobile Clients", Wireless Networks Oct. 1999, vol. 5 Issue 5. cited by examiner .
Czerwinski et al, "An Architecture for a Secure Service Discovery Service", Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM/IEEE international conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Aug. 1999. cited by examiner .
Veizades et al., "RFC No. 2165: Service Location Protocol", Jun. 1997 , http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2165.txt. cited by examiner .
"Java.TM. Remote Method Invocation Specification," Sun Microsystems, Inc., <java.sun.com/products/dk1.2beta1>, 1997. cited by other .
Agha, et al., "Actorspaces: An Open Distributed Programming Paradigm," University of Illinois, Report No. UIUCDCS-R-92-1766, Open Systems Laboratory TR No. 8, pp. 1-12, Nov. 1992. cited by other .
Ahmed, et al., "A Program Building Tool for Parallel Applications," Yale University, pp. 1-23, Dec. 1, 1993. cited by other .
Aldrich, et al., "Providing Easier Access to Remote Objects in Client-Server Systems," System Sciences, 1998, Proceedings of the 31.sup.st Hawaii Internat'l. Conference, Jan. 6-9, 1998, pp. 366-375. cited by other .
Aldrich, et al., "Providing Easier Access to Remote Objects in Distributed Systems," Calif. Institute of Technology, www.cs.Caltech.edu/%7Ejedi/paper.html, Nov. 21, 1997. cited by other .
Anderson, et al., "Persistent Linda: Linda+Transaction+Query Processing," Proceedings of the 13.sup.th Symposium on Fault Tolerant Systems, pp. 93-109, 1991. cited by other .
"Transparent Network Computing," Locus Computing Corporation, Jan. 5, 1995. cited by other .
Alexander, et al., "Active Bridging," Proceedings of the ACM/SIGCOMM'97 Conference, Cannes, France, Sep. 1997. cited by other .
Beech, et al., "Object Databases as Generalizations of Relational Databases," Computer Standards & Interfaces, vol. 13, Nos. 1/3 pp. 221-230, Amsterdam, NL, Jan. 1991. cited by other .
Bertino, et al., Object-Oriented Database Management Systems: Concepts and issues,: Computer, vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 33-47, Los Alamitos, CA, Apr. 1991. cited by other .
Betz, et al, "Interoperable Objects: Laying the Foundation for Distributed Object Computing," Dr. Dobb's Journal, vol. 19, No. 11, p. 18(13), Oct. 1994. cited by other .
Bevan, et al., "An Efficient Reference Counting Solution To The Distributed Garbage Collection Problem," Parallel Computing, NL, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 179-192, Jan. 1989. cited by other .
Birrell, et al., "Distributed Garbage Collection for Network Objects," Digital Systems Research Center, No. 116, pp. 1-18, Dec. 15, 1993. cited by other .
Birrell, et al., "Grapevine: An Exercise in Distributed Computing," Communications fo the ACM, vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 260-274, Apr. 1982. cited by other .
Birrell, et al., "Network Objects," DEC SRC Research Report 115, Feb. 28, 1995. cited by other .
Birrell, et al., "Implementing Remote Procedure Calls," ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 39-59, Feb. 1994. cited by other .
Birrell, et al., "Network Objects," Operating Systems Review, 27(5), pp. 217-230, Dec. 1993. cited by other .
Cannon, et al., "Adding Fault-Tolerant Transaction Processing to Linda," Software-Practice and Experience, vol. 24(5), pp. 449-466, May 1994. cited by other .
Cardelli, "Obliq, A Lightweight Language For Network Objects," Digital SRC, pp. 1-37, Nov. 5, 1993. cited by other .
Carriero, et al., "Distributed Data Structures in Linda," Principles of Programming Language, pp. 1-16, 1986. cited by other .
Carriero, et al., "Distributed Data Structures in Linda," Yale Research Report YALEU/DCS/RR-438, Nov. 1985. cited by other .
Chung, et al., "A Tiny' Pascal Compiler: Part 1: The P-Code Interpreter," BYTE Publications, Inc., Sep. 1978. cited by other .
Chung, et al., "A Tiny' Pascal Compiler: Part 2: The P-Compiler," BYTE Publications, Inc., Oct. 1978. cited by other .
Dave, et al., "Proxies, Application Interface, And Distributed Systems," Proceedings International Workshop On Object Orientation In Operating Systems, pp. 212-220, Sep. 24, 1992. cited by other .
Deux, et al., "The O2 System," Communications Of The Association For Computing Machinery, col. 34, No. 10, pp. 34-48, Oct. 1, 1991. cited by other .
Dijkstra, "Self-stabilizing Systems in Spite of Distributed Control," Communications of the ACM, vol. 17, No. 11, pp. 643-644, Nov. 1974. cited by other .
Dolev, et al., "On the Minimal Synchronism Needed for Distributed Consensus," Journal of the ACM, vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 77-97, Jan. 1987. cited by other .
Dollimore, et al., "The design of a System for Distributing Shared Objects," The Computer Journal, No. 6, Cambridge, GB, Dec. 1991. cited by other .
Dourish, "A Divergence-Based Model of Synchrony and Distribution in Collaborative Systems," Xerox Technical Report EPC-1194-102, pp. 1-10, 1994. cited by other .
Drexier, et al., "Incentive Engineering for Computational Resource Management," The Ecology of Computation, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., pp. 231-266, 1988. cited by other .
Gelernter, et al., "Parallel Programming in Linda," Yale University, pp. 1-21, Jan. 1995. cited by other .
Droms, "RFC 1541 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol," <http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu.htbin/rfc/rfc1541.html>, pp. 1-33, Oct. 1993. cited by other .
Emms, "A Definition Of An Access Control Systems Language," Computer Standards And Interfaces, vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 443-454, Jan. 1, 1997. cited by other .
Fleisch, et al., "High Performance Distributed Objects Using Distributed Shared Memory & Remote Method Invocation," System Sciences, 1998, Proceedings of the 31.sup.st Hawaii Internat'l. Conference, Jan. 6-9, 1998, pp. 574-578. cited by other .
Gelernter, "Generative Communication in Linda," ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 80-112, Jan. 1985. cited by other .
Gottlob, et al., "Extending Object-Oriented Systems with Roles," ACM Transactions On Information Systems, vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 268-296, Jul. 1996. cited by other .
Gray, et al. "Leases: An Efficient Fault-Tolerant Mechanism for Distributed File Cache Consistency," ACM, pp. 202-210, 1989. cited by other .
Guth, "JavaOne: Sun to Expand Java Distriubted Computing Effor," <http://www.sunworld.com/swol-02-1998/swol-02-sunspots.html>, XP-002109935, p. 1, Feb. 20, 1998. cited by other .
Guyennet, et al., "A New Consistency Protocol Implemented in the CaliF System," IEEE, 1094-7256/97, pp. 82-87, 1997. cited by other .
Guyennet, et al., "Distributed Shared Memory Layer for Cooperative Work Applications," IEEE, 0742-1303/97, pp. 72-78, 1997. cited by other .
Hamilton, et al., "Subcontract: A Flexible Base for Distributed Programming," Proceedings of 14.sup.th Symposium of Operating System Principles, Dec. 1993. cited by other .
Hamilton, "Java and the Shift to Net-Centric Computing," Computer, pp. 31-39, Aug. 1996. cited by other .
Harris, et al., "Proposal for a General Java Proxy Class for Distributed Systems and Other Uses," Netscape Communications Corp., Jun. 25, 1997. cited by other .
Hartman, et al., "Liquid Software: A New Paradigm For Networked Systems," Technical Report 96-11, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Univ. of Arizona, Jun. 1996. cited by other .
Howard, et al., "Scale and Performance in a Distributed File System," ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 51-81, Feb. 1988. cited by other .
Pier, "A Retrospective on the Dorando, A High-Performance Personal Computer," Xerox Corporation, Aug. 1983. cited by other .
Pinakis, "Using Linda as the Basis of an Operating System Microkernal," University of Western Australia, Dept. of Computer Science, pp. 1-165, Aug. 1993. cited by other .
Riggs, et al., "Picking State in the JAVA.TM. System," USENIX, Association Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems, CP-002112719, pp. 241-250, Jun. 17-21, 1996. cited by other .
Rosenberry, et al., "Understanding DCE," Chapters 1-3, 6, 1992. cited by other .
Sharrott, et al., "ObjectMap: Integrated High Performance Resources into a Distributed Object-oriented Environment," ICODP, 1995. cited by other .
Stevenson, "Token-Based Consistency of Replicated Servers," IEEE, CH2686-4/89/0000/0179, pp. 179-183, 1989. cited by other .
Thompson, "Regular Expression Search Algorithm," Communications of the ACM, vol. II, No. 6, p. 149 et seq., Jun. 1968. cited by other .
Venners, "Jini Technology, Out of the Box," JavaWorld, 'Online!, pp. 1-4, Dec. 1998. cited by other .
Waldo, et al., "Events in An RPC Based Distributed System," Proceedings Of The 1995 USENIX Technical Conference, Proceedings USENIX Winter 1995 Technical Conference, New Orleans, LA, USA, 16-20, pp. 131-142, Jan. 1995. cited by other .
Wilson, et al., "Design of the Opportunistic Garbage Collector," Proceedings of the Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages And Applications Conference, New Orleans, vol. 24, No. 10, Oct. 1989. cited by other .
Wollrath, et al., "A Distributed Object Model for theJaca.TM. System," USENIX Association, Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems, Jun. 17-21, 1996. cited by other .
Wu, "A Type System For An Object-Oriented Database Systems," Proceedings of the International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Tokyo, Japan, pp. 333-338, Sep. 11-13, 1991. cited by other .
Yemini, et al., "Towards Programmable Networks," IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management, L'Aquila, Italy, Oct. 1996. cited by other .
Yin, et al., "Using Leases to Support Server Driven Consistency in Large-Scale Systems," Computer Services Department, University of Texas at Austin, p. 285-294, May 26-28, 1998. cited by other .
Yin, et al., "Volume Leases for Consistency in Large-Scale Systems," IEEE Transactions on Knowledge & Data Engineering, vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 563-576, Jul./Aug. 1999. cited by other .
Mitchell, et al., "An Overview of the Spring System," Feb. 1994. cited by other .
Mitchell, et al., "Mesa Language Manual," Xerox Corporation, Palo Alto Research Center, 1978. cited by other .
McDaniel, "An Analysis of a Mesa Instruction Set," Xerox Corporation, May 1982. cited by other .
McGrath, "Discovery and its Discontents: Discovery Protocols for Ubiquitous Computing," Presented at Center for Excellence in Space Data and Information Science, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Apr. 5, 2000. cited by other .
Mummert, et al., "Long Term Distributed File Reference Tracing: Implementation and Experience," Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, pp. 1-28, Nov. 1994. cited by other .
Orfali, et al., "The Essential Distributed Objects Survival Guide," Chapter 11: Corba Commercial ORBs, pp. 203-215, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996. cited by other .
Ousterhout, et al., "The Sprite Network Operating System," Computer, IEEE, pp. 23-26, Feb. 1988. cited by other .
Pier, "A Retrospective on the Dorando, A High-Performance Personal Computer," IEEE Conference Proceedings, The 10.sup.th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture, 1993. cited by other .
Hunt, "IDF: A Graphical Data Flow Programming Language for Image Processing and Computer Vision," Proceedings of the International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pp. 351-360, Los Angeles, Nov. 4-7, 1990. cited by other .
IBM.TM. Technical Disclosure Bulletin, "Object Location Algorithm," vol. 36, No. 09B, pp. 257-258, Sep. 1993. cited by other .
IBM, "Chapter 6--Distributed SOM (DSOM)," SOMobjects Developer Toolkit Users Guide, Version 2.1, pp. 6-1-6-90, Oct. 1994. cited by other .
Anonymous, "Change-Notification Service for Shared Filed," IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, vol. 36, No. 8, pp. 77-82, XP002109435 New York, US, Nov. 1973. cited by other .
IBM.TM. Technical Disclosure Bulletin, "Retrieval of Qualified Variables Using Extendible Hashing," vol. 36, No. 12, pp. 301-303, Dec. 1993. cited by other .
Anonymous, "Resource Preemption for Priority Scheduling," IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, vol. 16, No. 6, p. 1931, XP002109435 New York, US, Nov. 1973. cited by other .
IBM.TM. Technical Disclosure Bulletin, "Local Network Monitoring to Populate Access Agent Directory," vol. 36, No. 09A, pp. 403*405, Sep. 1993. cited by other .
MUX-Elektronik, Java 1.1 Interactive Course, www.lls.se/.about.mux/javaic.html, 1995. cited by other .
Jones, et al., "Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management," pp. 165-175, John Wiley & Sons, 1996. cited by other .
Kambhatla, et al., "Recovery with Limited Replay: Fault-Tolerant Processes in Linda," Oregon Graduate Institute, Technical Report CSIE 90-019, pp. 1-16, Sep. 1990. cited by other .
Kay, et al., "An Overview of the Raleigh Object-Oriented Database System," ICL Technical Journal, vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 780-798, Oxford, GB, Nov. 1991. cited by other .
Kougiouris, et al., "Support for Space Efficient Object Invocation in Spring," Sep. 1994. cited by other .
Krasner, "The Smalltalk-80 Virtual Machine," BYTE Publications, Inc., pp. 300-320, Aug. 1991. cited by other .
Lamport, et al., "The Byzantine Generals Problem," ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 382-401, Jul. 1982. cited by other .
Linda Database Search, pp. 1-68, Jul. 20, 1995. cited by other .
Liskov, et al., "Distributed Object Management in Thor," International Workshop on Distributed Object Management, 1992. cited by other .
Gosling, et al., "The Java.TM. Language Specification," Addison-Wesley, 1996. cited by other .
"Flexible Internetworking of Devices and Controls," Munson, et al., IEEE, 1999, pp. 1139-1145. cited by other .
"Management of Advanced Services in H.323 Internet Protocol Telephony," Pagurek, et al., IEEE, 2000, pp. 91-100, XP001004237. cited by other .
"Composable Ad Hoc Location-Based Services for Hetergeneous Mobile Clients," Wireless Networs5, Hodes, et al., J.C. Baltzer AG, Science Publishers, 1999, pp. 411-427, XP000902495. cited by other .
"Core Jini," K. Edwards, PTR Prentice Hall, 1.sup.st Edition, Jun. 1999, 5 pages, XP002212106. cited by other .
"The Use of Adapters to Support Cooperative Sharing," Trevor, et al., CSCW Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Oct. 22, 1994, pp. 219-230, XP002174728. cited by other .
International Search Report for PCT/US 01/15099, mailed Sep. 25, 2002. cited by other .
Jaworski, "Java 1.1 Developer's Guide, 2.sup.nd Edition," Sams.net, 1997. cited by other .
Coulouris, et al., "Distributed Systems Concepts and Designs," Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1994. cited by other .
Mullender, "Distributed Systems," Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1993. cited by other .
Lindholm, et al., "The Java.TM. Virtual Machine Specification," Addison Wesley, 1996. cited by other .
"SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol," msdn online Web Workshop, Microsoft, Apr. 26, 2000, http://msdn.Microsoft.com/xml/general/soapspec.asp, 34 pages. cited by other .
Rob Guth, "Sun tries on JacaSpaces for Distributed OS," Aug. 1997, vol. 19, Issue 34, 2 pages. cited by other .
Microsoft, "Microsoft.NET: Realizing the Next Generation Internet," A Microsoft White Paper, Jun. 2000, 8 pages. cited by other .
K: F. Eustice, et al., "A Universal Information Appliance," IBM Systems Journal, vol. 38, No. 4, 1999, pp. 575-601. cited by other .
Wycoff et al., "T Spaces," IBM Systems Journal, vol. 37, No. 3-Java Technology, Aug. 1998, 36 pages. cited by other .
Steve Morgan, "Jini to the Rescue," IEEE Spectrum, Apr. 2000, vol. 37, No. 4, 8 pages. cited by other .
"The Jini.TM. Architecture: Dynamic Services in a Flexible Network," Ken Arnold, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Jun. 1999, 7 pages. cited by other.

Primary Examiner: Blair; Douglas B
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Kowert; Robert C. Meyertons, Hood, Kivlin, Kowert & Goetzel, P.C.

Parent Case Text

PRIORITY INFORMATION

This application claims benefit of priority to the following provisional applications, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety:

Ser. No. 60/202,975 filed May 9, 2000 titled Distributed Computing Environment;

Ser. No. 60/208,011 filed May 26, 2000 titled Distributed Computing Environment;

Ser. No. 60/209,430 filed Jun. 2, 2000 titled Distributed Computing Environment;

Ser. No. 60/209,140 filed Jun. 2, 2000 titled Distributed Computing Environment; and

Ser. No. 60/209,525 filed Jun. 5, 2000 titled Distributed Computing Environment.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A method for accessing a proximity service, comprising: a client device forming a direct point-to-point communication link with a service device; the client device directly requesting to the service device a document that describes an interface to access a service provided by the service device; the client device receiving said document directly from the service device, wherein said document comprises information describing how to access the service; wherein said requesting and said receiving are performed over said direct point-to-point communication link; and the client device using the information from said document to access the service, wherein said using the information from said document to access the service comprises a client on the client device requesting a security credential from an authentication service specified in said document.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said requesting comprises the client sending an advertisement request message for the service to the service device over the direct point-to-point communication link, wherein the advertisement request message is in a data representation language.

3. The method as recited in claim 2, wherein the data representation language is eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said document comprises a service advertisement for the service, wherein said service advertisement comprises a schema specifying an interface to at least a portion the service.

5. The method as recited in claim 4, wherein said schema is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema defining XML messages for a client on the client device to send to the service and the service to send to the client in order for the client to access capabilities of the service.

6. The method as recited in claim 5, wherein the client device using the information from said document comprises the client sending one or more of said XML messages to the service over said direct point-to-point communication link.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said receiving comprises receiving said document in an advertisement request response message sent from the service over said direct point-to-point communication link, wherein the advertisement request response message is in a data representation language.

8. The method as recited in claim 7, wherein the data representation language is eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

9. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the client device is in physical proximity of the service device.

10. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said direct point-to-point communication link is an IrDA infrared link.

11. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the client device is in wireless proximity of the service device.

12. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said requesting comprises including a client security credential in a request to said service device for said document, and wherein said service device authenticates said client security credential before sending said document to the client device.

13. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said client device using the information from said document to access the service further comprises: the client receiving said security credential; and the client including said security credential with a subsequent request to the service to access a capability of the service.

14. The method as recited in claim 13, further comprising the service verifying the client's security credential before allowing access to the capability.

15. The method as recited in claim 14, wherein said authentication service is provided by the service device.

16. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the client device supports a transport connection in addition to said direct point-to-point communication link, wherein said client device using the information from said document to access the service comprises the client device making said document available to other devices over said transport connection, wherein the client device provides a bridge from said transport connection to said direct point-to-point communication link so that the other devices may access the service.

17. The method as recited in claim 16, wherein said transport connection comprises a network connection.

18. The method as recited in claim 17, wherein said network connection comprises an Internet connection.

19. A system, comprising: a service device configured to support a direct point-to-point communication link and provide a service; a client device configured to form said direct point-to-point communication link with the service device; wherein the client device is further configured to directly request from the service device a document that describes an interface to access the service; wherein the service device is further configured to provide said document directly to the client device over said direct point-to-point communication link; wherein the client device is further configured to use the information from said document to access the service, and wherein the client device is further configured to support a transport connection in addition to said direct point-to-point communication link, wherein said client device is further configured to make said document available to other devices over said transport connection and provide a bridge from said transport connection to said direct point-to-point communication link so that the other devices may access the service.

20. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the client device is configured to request said document by sending an advertisement request message for the service to the service device over the direct point-to-point communication link, wherein the advertisement request message is in a data representation language.

21. The system as recited in claim 20, wherein the data representation language is eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

22. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein said document comprises a service advertisement for the service, wherein said service advertisement comprises a schema specifying an interface to at least a portion the service.

23. The system as recited in claim 22, wherein said schema is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema defining XML messages for a client on the client device to send to the service and the service to send to the client in order for the client to access capabilities of the service.

24. The system as recited in claim 23, wherein the client device is configured to use the information from said document to send one or more of said XML messages to the service over said direct point-to-point communication link.

25. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the client device is configured to receive said document in an advertisement request response message sent from the service over said direct point-to-point communication link, wherein the advertisement request response message is in a data representation language.

26. The system as recited in claim 25, wherein the data representation language is eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

27. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the client device is in physical proximity of the service device.

28. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein said direct point-to-point communication link is an IrDA infrared link.

29. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the client device is in wireless proximity of the service device.

30. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the client device is configured to include a client security credential in a request to said service device for said document, and wherein said service device is configured to authenticate said client security credential before sending said document to the client device.