WO2002032070A2

WO2002032070A2 - A method for communicating between a transmitting device and a receiving device

Info

Publication number: WO2002032070A2
Application number: PCT/IS2001/000020
Authority: WO
Inventors: Gudmundur Hafteinsson; Gudmundur Ludviksson
Original assignee: Dimon-Hugbunadarhus Ehf.
Priority date: 2000-10-11
Filing date: 2001-10-11
Publication date: 2002-04-18
Also published as: AU2001292210A1; EP1328878A2; WO2002032070A3

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and a method for communication of data between a WEB server and a device using a wireless application protocol, such as a WAP mobile phone. The invention further relates to a method of dynamically, cheaper and faster conversion of data between a first and a second format compliant to the WEB server and the device.

Description

A METHOD FOR COMMUNICATING BETWEEN A TRANSMITTING DEVICE AND A RECEIVING DEVICE

Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a system and a method for communication of data between a WEB server and a device using a wireless application protocol, such as a WAP mobile phone. The invention further relates to a method of dynamically, cheaper and faster conversion of data between a first and a second format compliant to the WEB server and the device.

Description of the Prior Art

Primarily due to differences in data formats there are currently no means for reading data comprised in e.g. an HTML WEB page from a WAP phone. In order to access WEB page information from a WAP phone, the WEB pages has to be converted. Today the owner of a WEB page typically selects specific data from the WEB page that he wants to make accessible from a WAP phone. The data is then converted and a new data file containing the converted data is created. When a WAP phone customer enters the specific WEB page, it is in reality the data file containing the converted data that is entered.

Due to the duplication of the WEB page information, two data files having different content, even though they disclose the same information, have to be updated. This is both costly and time consuming. Moreover the risk of faults are higher given that two pages must provide identical information in different formats.

General Description of the Invention

It is an object of the present invention is to allow conversion of data formats between two different formats without having two different pages with the same information but for different devices. A dynamical method is both faster and cheaper than current methods, and lowers the risk of errors by having two different pages due to different devices. Accordingly the present invention relates to a method for communicating between a transmitting device and a receiving device, the communication comprising conversion of source data in a first format as output from the transmitting device into a second format to be received by the receiving device. The transmitting device can serve as a receiving device and vice verse. As an example the transmitting device could be an Internet server and the receiving device a mobile phone with in that case the formats could be HTML and WML respectively. The communication between such devices is done by converting the received data from the server from the first format by associating the data with conversion rules of a set of conversion rules. Before entering the conversion the source data could preferably be transformed into a standardised format such as XML. If the format is for example an HTML format, then this source data format has to be converted into the right format before entering the conversion. This is done by a pre-processor, which converts the source data format into the right format. The association could be performed by means of a database search routine where the content of the database is the conversion rules. The conversion rules comprises relations between the data in the first format and data in the second format and could be performed over more than one conversion step by associating the data in the first format with conversion rules of more than one set of conversion rules. If the conversion is a two-step conversion, the first conversion step could comprise conversion rules that convert the first format into a legal format by associating the data in the first format with rules relating to the legal format. The legal format could be any intermediate format such as XML or XHTML. The second conversion step could comprise conversion rules that convert the legal format into the second format such as WML by associating the data in the legal format with rules relating to the second format. The two-step conversion has the advantage of enabling a separation between the conversion of the HTML and the conversion of the WML formats in two separate databases which both converts into the legal format (XML or XHTML). In that sense it will be possible to communicate globally, despite of differences in the specific formats, as long as the communicating parties can agree on one intermediate format.

For three-step conversion, a further conversion step could comprise conversion rules that select information from the source data to be converted by associating the source data with selection rules before being associated to the second format. The communication is initiated by means of parameters that are passed in as a part of the request wherein said parameters are for selection of the conversion and selection rules. The request for data can also concern data from more than one data source. As an example data may be selected based upon the technical capabilities of the device or data may be selected based upon a desired reduction of the information to be communicated. If a user of a mobile phone requests data from a WEB server, the parameter could comprise a list of technical features of the mobile phone, e.g. that colours in graphical images can not be shown and the amount of communicated data therefore could be reduced. If a owner of an Internet home page only wants to communicate certain parts of the page the parameter could comprise a list of data fields of the Internet home page to be converted. In that way the amount of data to be converted and transmitted between the communication parties could be reduced and the conversion could be adapted for a specific purpose.

According to another aspect the present invention relates to a system for wireless communication of data between a WEB server and a device using a wireless application protocol, comprising a converter for inline conversion of data in a first format as output from the WEB server into a second format to be received by the device or for conversion of data in the second format into data in the first format, said system comprising:

- receiving means for receiving the data in the first format, - a database for storing and retrieving a conversion scheme,

- a converter for converting the data based on the conversion scheme, and

- transmitting means for transmitting the converted data.

The converter for inline conversion of data in a first format could be specifically adapted for conversion of WEB server data into a second format to be received by the device such as a mobile phone or for conversion of data in the second format into data in the first format. The converter may be a processor adapted in a computer system of any kind, such as in a PC. The two data formats could be HTML and WML or any other formats adapted for the two platforms - the WEB server and the WAP device. Inline conversion means that the conversion takes place when a WAP device user requests information comprised in a WEB page, so that the client receives information comprised in the actual WEB page and not information from the WEB page that has earlier been converted.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention the converter may comprise a computer database wherein output data generated in response to input data is controlled by an identifier of the WEB server data. The identification could be based on a user defined relationship between a number of WEB pages and matching schemas comprising conversion rules for the WEB pages. When a WEB page owner decides to enable conversion of the WEB page into a WAP device compliant format such as WML The conversion rules may be grouped into the schemas e.g. based on various versions of the two formats e.g. various versions of HTML, XML or WML or they may be grouped based on the type of information being converted.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention the first format is HTML, XML or a XML compliant format and the second format is WML or a similar a WAP compliant format. If the WEB page is in HTML the HTML could preferably be pre-converted into XML and then the XML format could be converted into WML based on a conversion rule schema.

Brief description of the drawings

A preferred embodiment of the invention will now be described in details with reference to the drawing in which:

Fig. 1 shows a functional diagram of a system server,

Fig. 2 shows a system Layout diagram as an example of how the server could be used to implement a three-stage transformation.

The invention will in the following be described by means of an example of as system for conversion of data formats for exchange of data between a WEB server and a WAP device. The system makes it quicker and cheaper than currently possible to publish HTML content in WAP device. By use of the system, any existing HTML content can be transformed to the WAP device's native format WML. Therefore virtually any service currently available on the Internet can be made available to WAP devices in a matter of a few hours or days.

The system acts as a filtering proxy, meaning that it processes and alters all requests from the WAP device and all responses from the HTML web server. No alterations are needed on the server as long as it is at least HTTP 1.0 compliant and as long as the WAP device is compliant it should be able to display the response given from the system (since it is fully compliant with the WAP standard as defined by the WAP forum). A general overview is shown in Fig.1. The functionality's of the system in Fig.1 may be grouped into several parts, whereby the first part is the request to the server software 1 which is usually an HTTP request, but which may also originate from other sources. Parameters 2 are passed in as part of the request and can be used to decide what document to transform, etc.. Currently the parameters are used to decide which source document(s) to retrieve and how to transform them (i.e. which transformation documents to use). Each transformation may additionally define custom parameters that should be passed to it in the request. The source document retrieval 3 can take documents from any source. Current implemented sources are through HTTP from another web server, and through local I/O from the file system, but future sources will include databases and other 3rd-party systems such as content management systems. The source document 4 must be in legal XML format, but for non-XML documents (such as HTML) there may be a pre processor (not shown explicitly on the diagram) which converts the input into a legal XML document in some well-defined way. The server supports multiple sources within one request. The multiple sources 5 are combined into one XML document, which allows access to all the sources in one document. The combined document 6 is the input for the next process. The input document is either the combined source documents directly, or the output from a previous transformation process. It is transformed by transformation process 7. One example of a transformation process is to apply an XSL transformation style sheet document. The type of the transformation document 8 depends on the transformation process. Which document is used depends on both the configuration of the transformation process and the parameters in the request. One example of such a configuration is to use one request parameter to name a document in the file system. Another example is to use the user agent name (part of the request) to decide what transformation to use. The transformation document storage is independent of the transformation process hence these documents may be stored in any preferred fashion, e.g. in a file system or a database. The output from the transformation 9 is either the final result or the input to another transformation process. The configuration decides whether there is more transformation processes 10. Each transformation process has its own unique configuration and behaves in a certain predefined way (eg. one can transform based on a request selected transformation document and another one can transform based on the user agent name). The result is sent to the user agent as a response 11 to its request. Figure 2 shows a System Layout diagram as an example of how the server could be used to implement a three-stage transformation, where each stage is marked with Nil.

A three-stage transformation first extracts all relevant information into a general document (usually in XHTML format), then transforms that document in a general form in another markup language (for example WML, CHTML, HTML or XHTML) and finally transforms . that document into specific content adapted to the user agent (for example WML which is specifically adapted for the Nokia 7110 WAP browser, optimising for its display and working around its bugs).

Individual steps in the Layout diagram have the following function: The HTML source 12 may be anywhere, for example on an HTTP web server. The HTML document 13 is transmitted as-is. Note that HTML documents are not legal XML documents. The HTML document is converted to legal XML 14 before being presented to the transformation 27 process. The input into the first stage of the transformation 15 is an XML document composed of the XML inputs, which have no predefined document type. The first stage 16 of the transformation extracts relevant information from the source document. The output 17 from the first stage is a predefined XML format, for example XHTML, which contains the relevant information from the XML input source. The second stage 18 transforms 27 the output from the first stage into a specific markup language (not device-specific). An example of this would be transforming to WML. This step may be regarded as a markup language translation. The general ML 19 is a specific markup language (eg. HTML, WML, CHTML, XHTML etc.), but not adapted to known implementation details of any specific device. The third stage 20 transforms 27 the general form of the markup language and adapts it the specific user agent (device) doing the request. An example of adaptation is to divide up text elements to fit in the user agent device screen, or to work around a flawed user agent ML implementation 21. The device- specific markup language 21 is a result, which has been adapted to the specific user agent doing the request. The user agent receives the output 22. Other sources 23 can be used to generate the XML content. Examples of such sources are databases, content management systems, file systems, etc. Which transformation document to use is determined by the user request 24 (e.g. by means of a request parameter). Which transformation document to use is determined by the name of the user agent 25, 26 (there exists a mapping between user agent names and what transformation document to use). The transformation document database might, for example, be a local file system or a database. The transformation process and the storage mechanism are mutually independent, hence the storage mechanism may be changed transparently. A system development tool 28 may be used to define transformations for the first stage. These transformations may also contain hints for the third-stage transformations, but these hints are then necessarily dependent on that transformation.

Claims

1. A method for communicating between a transmitting device and a receiving device, the communication comprising conversion of source data in a first format as output from the transmitting device into a second format to be received by the receiving device, said method comprising the steps of inline:

- receiving data in the first format from the server,

- converting the source data from the first format into data in the second format by associating the data in the first format with conversion rules of a set of conversion rules, the set of conversion rules comprising relations between the data in the first format and data in second format, and

- forwarding the data in the second format to the client.

2. A method according to claim 1, wherein the conversion is performed over more than one conversion steps by associating the data in the first format with conversion rules of more than one set of conversion rules.

3. A method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the conversion is divided into at least a first conversion step and a second conversion step, wherein the first conversion step comprises converting the source data from the first format into a legal format by associating the data in the first format with rules relating to the legal format, and wherein the second conversion step comprises converting the legal format into the second format by associating the data in the legal format with rules relating to the second format.

4. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the conversion further comprises selecting information from the source data to be converted by associating the source data with selection rules.

5. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein communication is initiated by a request for data from a data source, the request comprising a first parameter for selection of the conversion rules.

6. A method according to claim 5, wherein the request further comprises a second parameter for selection of the selection rules.

7. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the transmitting device is a device using a wireless application protocol and wherein the first format is a format of that device.

5

8. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the transmitting device is a WEB server and wherein the first format is a source format of WEB servers.

10 9. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the receiving device is a device using a wireless application protocol and wherein the second format is a format of that device.

10. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the receiving device is a 15 WEB server and wherein the second format is a source format of WEB servers.

11. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the source data is translated into a general format prior to the conversion.

20 12. A method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the request for data concerns data from more than one data source.

13. A system for wireless communication of data between a WEB server and a device using a wireless application protocol, comprising a converter for inline conversion of data 25 in a first format as output from the WEB server into a second format to be received by the device or for conversion of data in the second format into data in the first format, said system comprising:

- receiving means for receiving the data in the first format, 30 - a database for storing and retrieving a conversion scheme,

- a converter for converting the data based on the conversion scheme, and

- transmitting means for transmitting the converted data.