Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 7
Claim 1
Independent Claim
144 words
A database system interfaced with client applications running on computers (28) having diverse hardware configurations and diverse software operating environments, with different ones of the computers utilizing several different encoding formats for reading and writing fully-formatted electronic documents; the database system comprising an appearance database (24) for storing electronic documents written in any of the encoding formats upon request of any of the client applications and rendering means coupled to the database for accessing any of the electronic documents stored therein upon request of any of the client applications, the rendering means including means (42) for converting the encoding formats of at least some of the documents stored in the database into other encoding formats for client applications running on computers utilizing the other encoding formats, thereby providing psychophysically equivalent renderings of such documents for retrieval by the computers utilizing the other encoding formats.
Claim 2
Dependent Claim
144 words
A database system interfaced with client applications running on computers (28) having diverse hardware configurations and diverse software operating environments, with different ones of the computers utilizing several different encoding formats for reading and writing fully-formatted electronic documents; the database system comprising an appearance database (24) for storing electronic documents written in any of the encoding formats upon request of any of the client applications and rendering means coupled to the database for accessing any of the electronic documents stored therein upon request of any of the client applications, the rendering means including means (42) for converting the encoding formats of at least some of the documents stored in the database into other encoding formats for client applications running on computers utilizing the other encoding formats, thereby providing psychophysically equivalent renderings of such documents for retrieval by the computers utilizing the other encoding formats.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim
75 words
The database system of Claim 1, including: means (67) for assigning a unique identification handle and file location to each of the electronic documents as it is entered into the database, means for creating textual descriptions for the documents as and after they are entered into the database, the descriptions including textual encodings of the handles and file locations of the documents to which they pertain, and a description database (26) for storing the descriptions
Claim 4
Dependent Claim
63 words
The database system of Claim 2, including means for searching the descriptions for matches to search queries entered by the client applications, and means for returning the number of matches that are found for each search query to the client application making the query, together with a description database name and file location for each query-matching description if requested by the client application.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim
45 words
The database system of any preceding Claim, wherein the client applications are interfaced with the database system by a remote procedure call interface, thereby enabling the client applications to invoke database operations by making remote procedure calls in accordance with a predetermined remote procedure protocol.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim
80 words
The database system of Claim 4, wherein the remote procedure protocol comprises a first procedure call for initiating a specified database operation and for returning at least partial results of it to the client application making the call; a second procedure call, which may be repeated as required, for status checking the specified operation and for returning additional results of it when available and a third procedure call for terminating the database operation and releasing memory resources allocated to it.
Claim 7
Dependent Claim
29 words
The database system of Claim 5, including a main server program from which all of the database operations are forked as child processes in response to arguments specifying them.