Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
  • H04N21/00—Selective content distribution, e.g. interactive television or video on demand [VOD]
  • H04N21/20—Servers specifically adapted for the distribution of content, e.g. VOD servers; Operations thereof
  • H04N21/25—Management operations performed by the server for facilitating the content distribution or administrating data related to end-users or client devices, e.g. end-user or client device authentication, learning user preferences for recommending movies
  • H04N21/258—Client or end-user data management, e.g. managing client capabilities, user preferences or demographics, processing of multiple end-users preferences to derive collaborative data
  • H04N21/25808—Management of client data
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
  • G06F16/00—Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
  • G06F16/90—Details of database functions independent of the retrieved data types
  • G06F16/95—Retrieval from the web
  • G06F16/957—Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
  • G06F16/9577—Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L69/00—Network arrangements, protocols or services independent of the application payload and not provided for in the other groups of this subclass
  • H04L69/24—Negotiation of communication capabilities

Definitions

• the present invention relates to client/server systems and more particularly, the present invention relates to transferring content between server and client.
• the user turns on the telephone and a signal is sent to an antenna which transmits the signal to the nearest cellular receiving base station which picks up the telephone's transmission.
• the customer then, for example, dials a request for an internet connection to the base station which then sends the request through a base station controller to a mobile switching center.
• the switching center routes the request via the appropriate route to the desired destination, e.g. - the web server address defined in the request (URL).
• the server retrieves the information requested by the customer, the information is reformatted to fit on the cellular telephone display screen and the information is passed through the mobile switching center and base station controller and base station to be transmitted back to the cellular telephone where the requested information is then displayed on the display of the cellular telephone.
• the size of the display and its resolution are also limited.
• the data transmission speeds for transmitting data between the server and the client is presently limited to around 9.6 kilobits per second which is considerably slower than the 56 kilobits per second commonly used by clients communicating with Internet servers via ordinary land based telephone lines and substantially slower than clients communicating with servers utilizing high speed data lines (e.g. - Digital Subscriber Lines).
• a new technique for transferring content between a server and a client having a limited memory capacity via a gateway by having the gateway split a page to be sent to the client into two or more sub-pages when the memory of the client is insufficient to store the entire page.
• a method of transferring content between a server and a client comprising the steps of: sending a request for content and characteristics of the client from the client to the server; fitting the requested content in the server according to the characteristics of the client forwarded by the client; and sending the fitted requested content from the server to the client.
• an apparatus for transferring content between a server and a client comprising: a receiver for receiving from the client a request for content and characteristics of the client; a memory for storing the content requested by the client; fitting means for fitting the stored content according to the characteristics of the client forwarded by the client; and an output unit for sending the fitted requested content to the client.
• Fig. 1 illustrates a telecommunication system to which the present invention may be applied.
• Fig. 2 is a flowchart of the operation of a portion of the present invention.
• Fig. 3 illustrates page splitting in accordance with the present invention.
• Fig. 4 is a flowchart illustrating scaling in accordance with the present invention.
• a customer forwards a request for content from an internet web server.
• the request is sent by radio waves to a base station which in turn transmits the request to a base station controller which is also connected to other base stations.
• the base station controller forwards the request to a mobile switching center which, in the case of an ordinary phone call, sends information to a central telephone office for connection to a requested telephone or, in the case of an internet request, forwards the internet request, for example, through a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) Gateway, to an internet web server.
• a mobile switching center which, in the case of an ordinary phone call, sends information to a central telephone office for connection to a requested telephone or, in the case of an internet request, forwards the internet request, for example, through a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) Gateway, to an internet web server.
• WAP Wireless Application Protocol
• the internet web server processes the request and forwards the content back to the cellular telephone of the client essentially tracing the same path back to the cellular telephone.
• a client requesting content from an internet web server is utilizing either a desktop computer having a relatively large display and a reasonably powerful CPU and sufficient memory for both storing and displaying graphical content or a laptop computer which may have a somewhat less powerful CPU and a smaller memory capacity but nevertheless has sufficient power and memory capacity to display graphical content from the internet web server.
• Fig. 2 illustrates a flowchart illustrating an embodiment of the fitting function of the present invention in the form of a page splitting function.
• the client Upon starting the page splitting function, the client initiates contact with the web server utilizing an appropriate client/server handshake protocol and further sends a request to the web server for content in Step 10. Included in the handshake protocol is information transmitted to the server as to the memory capability of the client with regard to storing a page of graphical content.
• the request and handshake protocol and content are not transmitted directly between the mobile switching center and the internet web server but rather are transferred via a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) Gateway which serves as an interface between the mobile switching center or cellular network and the internet web server and which actually performs the various functions of the present invention as well as performing various other functions.
• WAP Wireless Application Protocol
• Step 20 a WML (Wireless Markup Language) page is received by the Gateway from the web server in response to the request of the client.
• WML Wireless Markup Language
• Step 30 the WML page is formatted and all unnecessary material removed (such as comments, unnecessary line breaks, etc.). This "cleaning" of the WML page reduces the amount of memory needed for the page and allows a more precise estimation as to whether page splitting is needed.
• Step 35 the page size (that is, the amount of memory needed to store such a page) is determined.
• Step 40 the WML page size is compared with the client memory limit which was previously transferred to the Gateway during the aforementioned handshake procedure.
• the comparison of the uncompiled WML page size with the client memory limit cannot determine with no uncertainty as to whether the compiled WML page is greater than the client memory limit but rather can only determine with certainty that the uncompiled WML page size is greater than the client memory limit thereby insuring that the compiled WML page size must be greater than the client memory limit.
• Step 50 the process moves to Step 50 in which the WML page is split into two or more WML sub-pages.
• Step 60 the split WML sub-pages are compiled in accordance with the usual protocols and in Step 70, the compiled WML sub-pages are sent to the client for display on the client's display.
• Step 40 if in Step 40 the WML page size is not greater than the client memory limit, the process proceeds to Step 80 in which the WML page is compiled using the same protocol utilized in Step 60.
• Step 90 the compiled WML page size is compared with the client memory limit.
• Step 50 the WML page is split into two or more WLM sub-pages as noted above.
• the compiled WML page is then sent to the client as in Step 70.
• Fig. 3 illustrates an example of WML page splitting in accordance with the present invention.
• the original page is unfortunately too large to be stored and displayed on the display of the client.
• the original page is split into sub-page 1/2 and sub-page 2/2.
• a - Links, tasks (Go, Do, etc.); B - Some input types (Optgroup, Fieldset, etc.); and C - Words. If it is necessary to split an Optgroup, it can be effected by placing a link to the actual page which points to a separate sub-page with the Optgroup on it. When splitting in the middle of formatting elements, the elements must be closed and reopened on the next page. For example:
• a Deck (which is a precisely defined WAP term) is a downloaded unit of content.
• a WAP link always points to a Deck/Card.
• the Deck contains one or more Cards.
• the display unit is the Card and the downloaded unit is the Deck. If there is a link in a Card which points to another Card in the same Deck, then the following link will cause no network traffic.
• the possible splitting points in a Deck are as follows:
• buttons for the client are Options" and "Back.”
• Options By pressing the Options” button, the user can reach the functions defined by the web browser, such as "exit browsing,” “set bookmark,” etc. and functions set by the WAP application.
• the "Back” button is mostly used to step back, as in the case of an HTML
• the WAP application can assign a different action (and title) to it, or can disable (hide it).
• An “Anchor” is a synonym for a link.
• a WAP link looks very similar to an HTML link, that is, it is underlined and points to a URL. If the memory of the client is extremely limited, it is advisable to reduce the size of the page as much as possible. Accordingly, the following element IDs should be translated to and from one character (or very short) identifiers.
• ID references (first of all, the URL references) are stored in the WMLC without compression.
• the process of shortening can be:
• the client is requesting a page, say http://wap.server.com/menu/main.wml"
• the WAP Gateway gets the page and translates it to: http://x166346 and remarks that 166346 is equal to http://wap.server.com/apps/banking/welcome.wml"
• the client sends a request, asks for the http://x 166346 link selected by the user.
• the WAP Gateway translates the request to http://wap.server.com/apps/banking/welcome.wml" from its translation table and passes the http request to the application server.
• a Deck contains at least one URL per Card and usually 5-10 URLs per Card.
• IDs the translation of IDs to reduce the size is significant when the client memory is extremely limited.
• Fig. 4 is a flowchart illustrating another aspect of the present invention, namely, fitting the content by the scaling of content, such as graphical content, when the client requests such graphical content provided by the server and then displays the received graphical content.
• Using physical device coordinates means that an application programmer uses the actual device coordinates of the screen of the client. For example, if the programmer wishes to draw a line from one end of the screen to another and the width of the client display is 100 screen pixels or dots, then the actual drawing instruction is something like a line (1 , 100).
• a second solution is the use of a logical coordinate system wherein a graphics submodule of the client takes care of the display scaling.
• the advantage of this solution is that the application programmer does not have to be concerned with the size or aspect ratio or other characteristics of the display of the client.
• a disadvantage of the logical coordinate approach is that there is a heavy load of scaling on the CPU of the client which can be prohibitive in the case of a CPU having limited capabilities such as that used in a cellular telephone.
• the load of scaling is placed on the server rather than the client.
• the client sends a request for graphical content with a header containing the physical characteristics of the client display to the server.
• the header for example an Accept-viewport header, provides the X and Y display sizes or resolution of the display and the aspect ratio of the display.
• Step 110 the server stores the requested graphical content in logical coordinate format.
• the server Upon beginning to process the request from the client, the server scales the graphical elements of the requested graphical content according to the characteristics contained in the header forwarded by the client.
• Step 130 the scaled requested graphical content is sent from the server to the client for display on the client's display.
• Device characteristics are communicated in optional protocol headers.
• a concrete example would be an HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) header, as is shown below.
• An example HTTP request packet looks like: GET/svg/drawing.svg HTTP/1.0
• the previous request extended by device characteristics header would be the following:
• the server stores the content in a normalized form.
• the total width is represented as 1.0
• the total height is likewise 1.0.
• a line that crosses the screen from top left to bottom right corner would look like: line(0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0)
• the server receives the request header with device characteristics, it will scale the content. It multiplies the screen width and height in the content with the physical width and height. After scaling the content would look like: line(0,0,70,45)
• the computational load of the graphics operation of the CPU of the client is reduced by as much as 50% which is significant in the case of a CPU having limited capabilities such as those contained in cellular phones.
• the only disadvantage of scaling in accordance with the present invention is that the CPU of the server must perform the CPU intensive scaling operation for all of the clients connected thereto. This can be a problem in the case of small servers having limited capabilities.
• the actual form of client device characteristics headers may vary depending on the communication protocol used between the client and server. Any transaction-type communication protocol would be suitable.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Databases & Information Systems (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Data Mining & Analysis (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Computer Graphics (AREA)
• Multimedia (AREA)
• Signal Processing (AREA)
• Information Transfer Between Computers (AREA)

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• 2000
  • 2000-11-01 WO PCT/FI2000/000953 patent/WO2001035595A1/en not_active Application Discontinuation
  • 2000-11-01 CN CN00815498A patent/CN1408168A/zh active Pending
  • 2000-11-01 EP EP00972952A patent/EP1232625A1/en not_active Withdrawn
  • 2000-11-01 AU AU11510/01A patent/AU1151001A/en not_active Abandoned

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