Event-driven rule-based messaging system

Claim 1

Apparatus for connection to a network for sending and receiving messages to and from said apparatus and at least one other network connected device in accordance with a plurality of rules, comprising: a rule processor for processing messages at said apparatus in accordance with at least one of said plurality of rules; each of said rules having a first portion consisting of an event indicia, a second portion consisting of a condition indicia, and a third portion consisting of an action indicia; an event generator being operative to indicate an occurrence of one of a plurality of events; said rule processor being operative to determine which of said rules have an event indicia corresponding to the occurrence of one of the plurality of events, to invoke only the rules for which the event portion corresponds to the occurrence of the event, and to evaluate the second portion of each invoked rule, to determine whether the condition indicia are met by the message; an action processor operative to invoke an action with respect to any of said messages in accordance with said third portion of each of said invoked rules for which the condition indicia are met; and an event manager having at least one event queue and operative to create event records in accordance with said plurality of events to store in said at least one event queue, and further operative to retrieve event records from said at least one event queue, wherein said at least one event queue comprises a persistent event queue for storing events which persist across invocations of said rule processor and a non-persistent event queue for storing events that do not persist across invocations of sadi rule processor.