Event architecture for system management in an operating system

Claim 1

Method for reporting an event in a data processing system (10) having processing means (12, 20) and memory means (14) and providing an event source (23, 23', 42, 80, 80', 80'', 86), an event sink (27, 27', 27'', 40, 84, 84', 84'') and a distributor (82, 88) for distributing event reports (25, 25', 92) from the event source to the event sink, the method comprising the steps of: generating an event report at the event source in response to an event triggered at the event source; forwarding said event report to said distributor; and forwarding said event report from said distributor to the event sink to inform the event sink of the triggered event characterized in that said event source, said event sink and said distributor are objects supporting a standardized interface for connecting said objects together by passing interface pointers between the respective objects.

Claim 4

The method according to one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that at least an additional event sink object is provided and the method further comprises the step of determining which event sink objects should receive the event report and forwarding the event report to the determined event sink object.

Claim 6

The method according to one of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that a plurality of event source objects is provided.

Claim 7

The method according to one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that the event report is an object.

Claim 8

The method according to one of claims 1 to 7, characterized in that said processing means includes an object-oriented operating system.

Claim 9

The method according to one of claims 1 to 8, characterized in that said memory means stores an event source holder object (50, 54) maintaining a register of registrations by event sink objects.

Claim 11

The method according to one of claims 1 to 10, characterized in that the event report includes a data structure holding property information about the triggered event.

Claim 12

The method according to one of claims 1 to 11, characterized by the step of storing registrations in an object in said memory means.

Claim 13

The method according to one of claims 1 to 12, characterized in that said event source object is capable of raising a set of events, and said memory means stores type information about the event source object, said type information specifying the set of events that the event source object may raise.

Claim 14

The method according to one of claims 1 to 13, characterized by a second distributor object (90) providing filtering information (94) to the first distributor object, said filtering information specifying a type of event report that the second distributor object wishes to receive, wherein the method further comprises the step of forwarding the event report from the first distributor object to the second distributor object when the filtering information indicates that the second distributor object wishes to receive the event report.

Claim 15

The method according to one of claims 1 to 14, characterized by the step of specifying an instance of a function in the interface to be called when the event report is received by the event sink object.