GB2351369A - Using WebDAV for runtime administration of software - Google Patents
Using WebDAV for runtime administration of software Download PDFInfo
- Publication number
- GB2351369A GB2351369A GB9914735A GB9914735A GB2351369A GB 2351369 A GB2351369 A GB 2351369A GB 9914735 A GB9914735 A GB 9914735A GB 9914735 A GB9914735 A GB 9914735A GB 2351369 A GB2351369 A GB 2351369A
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- Prior art keywords
- webdav
- identifier
- administration
- server
- command
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- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
- G06F8/00—Arrangements for software engineering
- G06F8/70—Software maintenance or management
- G06F8/71—Version control; Configuration management
-
- H—ELECTRICITY
- H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
- H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
- H04L67/00—Network arrangements or protocols for supporting network services or applications
- H04L67/01—Protocols
- H04L67/02—Protocols based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
-
- 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
- H04L69/30—Definitions, standards or architectural aspects of layered protocol stacks
- H04L69/32—Architecture of open systems interconnection [OSI] 7-layer type protocol stacks, e.g. the interfaces between the data link level and the physical level
- H04L69/322—Intralayer communication protocols among peer entities or protocol data unit [PDU] definitions
- H04L69/329—Intralayer communication protocols among peer entities or protocol data unit [PDU] definitions in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
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- Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
- Computer Networks & Wireless Communication (AREA)
- Signal Processing (AREA)
- Computer Security & Cryptography (AREA)
- Software Systems (AREA)
- General Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
- Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
- Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
- General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
- Stored Programmes (AREA)
- Computer And Data Communications (AREA)
- Information Transfer Between Computers (AREA)
Abstract
A method of performing runtime administration of an operational computer software product by using a WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) client to access a WebDAV server, comprising steps carried out at the WebDAV client of: creating, 21, an administration command document containing an administrative operation to be carried out on the operational computer software product; building, 22, a WebDAV identifier to be used in accessing the WebDAV server including placing an administrative command type corresponding to said administration command document in a collection field of said WebDAV identifier; and making a WebDAV PUT call, 23, including said administration command document and said WebDAV identifier, to the WebDAV server. The server recognises, 31, that the command type is not a collection name and interprets it, 32, as an action to be performed on the software product. The action may be switching on a diagnostic trace facility.
Description
2351369 USING WEBDAV FOR DYNAMIC ADMINISTRATION OF OPERATIONAL SOFTWARE
Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of data processing and more particularly to the administration of an operational software product which is running in a data processing environment.
Background of the Invention
Software products are becoming more and more complex in their internal structure. Setting up a modern day software product so that it can run in a data processing environment can thus be a very tedious process. Not only must the software product be configured (e.g., various attribute values are assigned) but also the software product must be dynamically administered once it is up and running (e.g., switching on a diagnostic trace facility which keeps track of all of the processing steps taken during the execution of the software product for purposes of diagnosing error conditions) It is highly desirable that open standards be employed in the configuring and administration of a software product so that the configuring and/or administration can be -performed via a plurality of different software products running on different data processing platforms (e.g., different operating systems, protocols and data formats).
For example, open standards-based software product configuration has been described in "Collaborative Authoring on the web: introducing webDAVII, ASIS (American Society for Information Science) Bulletin, October /November 1998, E. James Whitehead, Jr, pp 1-6. Whitehead describes an extension to the standard HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) protocol which allows a plurality of client computers, each running a world wide web (WWW) browser application (e.g., Netscape Navigator), to perform collaborative authoring over the Internet of a set of common documents being held at a Web server. The extension is called WebDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) and the clients are called WebDAV clients and the server is called a WebDAV server. The WebDAV server stores configuration data in the form of documents for a particular software product and WebDav clients (tools) use the WebDAV protocol to access the WebDAV server over the Internet to make changes to the configuration data documents in order to carry out the configuration of a software product prior to deployment of the software product in a running data processing environment.
2 Because the web is used, the client configuration tools can be located far away (geographically) from the site where the software product to be configured is located. Further, the clients can be situated on data processing platforms which are very different from (heterogeneous) the platform of the software product to be configured.
However, there is a great need in the art for not only the configuration of a software product to be carried out via the web but also for the runtime administration of a configured software product to be carried out over the Web. The WebDAV protocol, however, does not provide for the latter to be carried out. Thus, according to the current state of the art, runtime administration of a software product must be done via proprietary tools and not based on open standards, thus greatly limiting the use of such tools and, correspondingly, limiting their commercial value in the marketplace.
Summary of the Invention
According to a first aspect, the present invention provides a method of performing administration of an operational computer software product by using a webDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) client to access a webDAV server, comprising steps carried out at the webDAV client of creating an administration command document containing an administrative operation to be carried out on the operational computer software product; building a WebDAV identifier to be used in accessing the webDAV server including placing an administrative command type corresponding to said administration command document in a collection field of said WebDAv identifier; and making a WebDAV PUT call, including said administration command document and said WebDAV identifier, to the webDAV server.
According to a second aspect, the present invention provides a method of performing administration of an operational computer software product by using a webDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) client to access a WebDAV server, comprising steps carried out at the webDAV server of receiving a WebDAV PUT call from the WebDAV client, the WebDAV PUT call including an administrative command document and a WebDAV identifier; recognizing that the -WebDAV identifier included in the WebDAV PUT call does not have a webDAV collection name in a collection field thereof; interpreting the contents of the collection field as a command for carrying out an administrative operation on the operational software product; and facilitating the carrying out of the command.
According to third and fourth aspects, the invention provides apparatuses for carrying out the methods of the first and second aspects, respectively.
3 According to f if th and sixth aspects, the invention provides computer program products for, when run on a computer, carrying out the method steps of the first and second aspects, respectively.
Thus, with the present invention, an extension to the WebDAV protocol is provided which allows web client tools to perform dynamic runtime administration of a running software product.
Brief Description of the Preferred Embodiments
The present invention will be better understood by the below described detailed description of the preferred embodiments thereof which will be presented in conjunction with the following drawing figures:
Figure 1 is a block diagram showing a basic architecture of a conventional WebDAV system to which the present invention can be advantageously applied; Figure 2 is a flowchart showing the steps taking place in a WebDAV client, according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention; and Figure 3 is a flowchart showing the steps taking place in a WebDAV server, according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiments
As was described above, the WebDAV protocol is a recent extension to the HTTP protocol which allows web clients to perform distributed and collaborative authoring of Web documents stored at a Web server. For example, as shown in Fig. 1, WebDAV clients 11, 12 and 13 can access a WebDAV server 14 over the Internet using the WebDAV protocol in order to add to, delete from or generally change WebDAV documents being held in the WebDAV server 14. The WebDAV protocol provides the appropriate locking mechanisms to make sure that only one WebDAV client at a time can access the same document in the WebDAV server 14. The WebDAV protocol also provides the appropriate namespace functionality so that each WebDAV client knows the appropriate names for the documents stored at the WebDAV server 14.
in addition to the document cited above, the WebDAV protocol is also described in "Distributed Authoring and Versioning Extensions for HTTP Enable Team Authoring" Microsoft Systems Journal, June 1999, Leonid Braginski and Matthew Powell, p. 53-67; and "WebDAV A Network Protocol for Remote Collaborative Authoring on the Webu, European Computer Supported Cooperative work Conference 1999 (ECSCW 199), E. James Whitehead, Jr. & Yaron Y. Goland.
4 According to the WebDAV protocol, a WebDAV client (e.g., 11) Can issue a PUT command in order to place some accompanying data into a file at the WebDAV server 14. The WebDAV client 11 provides the PUT command together with the data in the form of a document which is to be added to the WebDAV server 14 and a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to identify a location within the naLmespace of the WebDAV server 14 where the document is to be added. The preferred embodiment of the present invention extends the semantic of the WebDAV PUT verb to enable operational administration of a software product at runtime.
The WebDAV PUT verb is extended for administration by providing architected documents that specify administration commands. These documents are therefore not treated as data, but are interpreted by the programmer's WebDAV server classes as administration commands. The WebDAV server classes know how to interpret the documents as commands either by using a set of reserved or decorated URIs, or by introspection into the document itself. The latter technique is particularly useful for XML documents, and also leaves the URI free to locate an item of operational data in the same way that it would normally locate an item of configuration data.
The following steps are required to achieve this, using a reserved URI as an example. The steps taking place in the WebDAV client are shown in Fig. 2 while the steps taking place in the WebDAV server are shown in Fig. 3.
First, the steps in the WebDAV client application (e.g., 11) will be described with reference to Fig. 2:
1) Create the administration command document using, for example, an editor (step 21 of Fig. 2). This is where the WebDAV client (e.g., 11) creates the particular administration commands that the WebDAV client 11 wants to be administered on the running software product.
2) Build a URI (step 22) <webDAV--server>/<hostname>: <Port> /<action>/, where - <WebDx__server> gives the name of the WebDAV server implementation - <hostname>: <port> specifies the machine and port that the WebDAV server.
resides on - <action> gives the type of administration command and takes the place of the usual WebDAV collection name A typical way to do this would be to reserve all collections names that ended in 'Action, for <action>ls.
3) make a WebDAV PUT call (step 23) over the Internet to the WebDAV server 14 specifying the URI built at step 22 and passing the document created at step 21 as data.
Second, the steps taking place within the WebDAV server 14 will be described with reference to the flowchart of Fig. 3. When the WebDAV server 14 on host <hostname> listening on port <port> receives control, it locates the correct WebDAV server implementation using <WebDAI-server>. it then calls the implementation's Name spac emanage r class to process the PUT request. This does the following:
1) It recognises (step 31) that <action> is not a WebDAV collection name.
2) Instead of storing the supplied document in its repository it interprets <action> as a command (step 32). This interpretation involves calling some other piece of software passing the supplied document as a parameter. This other piece of software interprets the document and implements the administrative action described in the document. This other piece of software could be internal to or external from the WebDAV server classes.
A concrete example of such a reserved URI and such an administrative document is:
Example
Switching on a diagnostic trace facility on a piece of operational software.
The URI takes the f orm:
/WebDAVserverl /product ionl: 80/StartTraceACtion/ The administrative document takes the form (using XML as an example) <?x:ml version=111.011 encoding=11UTF-811?> <!DOCTYPE StartTraceAction SYSTEM llxxxx.dtd" > <StartTraceAction> <SoftwareRef ref Type=" Software" href ="product ionl /appl3" title=11appl311/> </StartTraceAction> 6
Claims (16)
1. A method of performing administration of an operational computer software product by using a WebDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) client to access a WebDAV server, comprising steps carried out at the WebDAV client of:
creating an administration command document containing an administrative operation to be carried out on the operational computer software product; building a WebDAV identifier to be used in accessing the WebDAV server including placing an administrative command type corresponding to said administration command document in a collection field of said WebDAV identifier; and making a WebDAV PUT call, including said administration command document and said WebDAV identifier, to the WebDAV server.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the WebDAV client accesses the WebDAV server over the Internet.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein the WebDAV identifier is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
4. A method of performing administration of an operational computer software product by using a WebDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) client to access a WebDAV server, comprising steps carried out at the WebDAV server of:
receiving a WebDAV PUT call from the WebDAV client, the WebDAV PUT call including an administrative command document and a webDAV identifier; recognizing that the WebDAV identifier included in the WebDAV PUT call does not have a WebDAV collection name in a collection field thereof; interpreting the contents of the collection field as a command for carrying out an administrative operation on the operational software product; and facilitating the carrying out of the command.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein the WebDAV client accesses the WebDAV server over the Internet.
7
6. The method of claim 4 wherein the WebDAV identifier is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
7. The method of claim 4 wherein the step of facilitating the carrying out of the command includes forwarding the administrative command document to a software element which then performs a corresponding data processing operation based on the administrative command document in order to perform administration on the computer software product.
8. An apparatus for performing administration of an operational computer software product by using a WebDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) client to access a WebDAV server, comprising at the WebDAV client:
means for creating an administration command document containing an administrative operation to be carried out on the operational computer software product; means for building a WebDAV identifier to be used in accessing the webDAV server including placing an administrative command type corresponding to said administration command document in a collection field of said WebDAV identifier; and means for making a WebDAV PUT call, including said administration command document and said WebDAV identifier, to the WebDAV server.
9. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the WebDAV client accesses the WebDAV server over the Internet.
10. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the WebDAV identifier is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
11. An apparatus for performing administration of an operational computer software product by using a WebDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) client to access a WebDAV server, comprising at the WebDAV server:
means for receiving a WebDAV PUT call from the WebDAV client, the WebDAV PUT call including an administrative command document and a WebDAV identifier; means for recognizing that the WebDAV identifier included in the WebDAV PUT call does not have a WebDAV collection name in a collection field thereof; 8 means for interpreting the contents of the collection field as a command for carrying out an administrative operation on the operational software product; and means for facilitating the carrying out of the command.
12. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the WebDAV client accesses the WebDAV server over the Internet.
13. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the WebDAV identifier is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
14. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the means for facilitating the carrying out of the command includes forwarding the administrative 15 command document to a software element which then performs a corresponding data processing operation based on the administrative command document in order to perform administration on the computer software product. 20
15. A computer program product stored on a computer readable storage medium for, when run on a computer, instructing the computer to carry out the method of claim 1.
16. A computer program product stored on a computer readable storage 25 medium for, when run on a computer, instructing the computer to carry out the method of claim 4.
-V
Priority Applications (1)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB9914735A GB2351369B (en) | 1999-06-24 | 1999-06-24 | Using webdav for dynamic administration of operational software |
Applications Claiming Priority (1)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB9914735A GB2351369B (en) | 1999-06-24 | 1999-06-24 | Using webdav for dynamic administration of operational software |
Publications (3)
| Publication Number | Publication Date |
|---|---|
| GB9914735D0 GB9914735D0 (en) | 1999-08-25 |
| GB2351369A true GB2351369A (en) | 2000-12-27 |
| GB2351369B GB2351369B (en) | 2003-10-08 |
Family
ID=10855947
Family Applications (1)
| Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB9914735A Expired - Fee Related GB2351369B (en) | 1999-06-24 | 1999-06-24 | Using webdav for dynamic administration of operational software |
Country Status (1)
| Country | Link |
|---|---|
| GB (1) | GB2351369B (en) |
Cited By (1)
| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US6691119B1 (en) * | 1999-07-26 | 2004-02-10 | Microsoft Corporation | Translating property names and name space names according to different naming schemes |
-
1999
- 1999-06-24 GB GB9914735A patent/GB2351369B/en not_active Expired - Fee Related
Non-Patent Citations (3)
| Title |
|---|
| "Glyphica Launches New WebDAV Server", at www.glyphica.com/Press/WebDavRelease.html . * |
| IEEE Internet Computing, Sep/Oct 98, pp34-40, at http://computer.org/internet/, Whitehead E J et al. * |
| TDB Access No. NNRD420136 & Research Disclosure, v42, n420, Apr 99, "Client App....(WebDAV) Server". * |
Cited By (1)
| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US6691119B1 (en) * | 1999-07-26 | 2004-02-10 | Microsoft Corporation | Translating property names and name space names according to different naming schemes |
Also Published As
| Publication number | Publication date |
|---|---|
| GB9914735D0 (en) | 1999-08-25 |
| GB2351369B (en) | 2003-10-08 |
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Legal Events
| Date | Code | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCNP | Patent ceased through non-payment of renewal fee |
Effective date: 20050624 |