A system and method are disclosed for acquiring network performance data. A mission server is connected to a network, and is operative to interface with Clients to define and receive requests for a mission. The mission as defined includes operations that require participation in the network by devices connected to a plurality of segments at a plurality of locations within the network. A plurality of sentries are provided on devices connected to the segments of the network at locations within the network so that the devices are operative to participate in the network from the segments of the network at their locations. The sentries are then operative to support the mission by participating in the network through the devices. A request for a mission is received at the mission server and the mission is communicated from the mission server to the sentries required to execute the mission. The operations of the mission are executed by the sentries and the results of the operations are communicated from the sentries to the mission server. The result of the mission is determined from the results of the operations.

A generic notifications framework (GNF) system integrates information from different protocols in a management station interfaced with a network and permits correlation of the information to make more sophisticated management decisions. The generic notifications framework system has one or more protocol-specific translators in communication with the network, a generic notifications framework in communication with the translators, and one or more consumer components in communication with the framework. The translators receive event data elements corresponding with different management protocols from the network and translate the event data elements into respective canonical data structures. Each of the canonical data structures includes (a) a generic field that is common to generally all of the canonical data structures, (b) one or more attribute fields generated by the translator based upon an examination of a protocol data unit (PDU) associated with each of the event data elements, and (c) a protocol data unit (PDU) that is generally identical to the native PDU that arrived with the event data element. Consumer components register with the framework to receive any canonical data structures having particular attribute fields. The generic notifications framework forwards the appropriate canonical data structures to appropriate consumer components based upon the attribute field values. A correlator may be associated with the framework to correlate the canonical data structures to derive an intelligent event data element, which is essentially the result of an assimilation and logical evaluation of various event data elements.

Disclosed is a process and apparatus for transferring data between an active file being used by an application and an external file that is stored on a storage medium. The active file will preferably have a different format than the external file. The apparatus includes a primary data structure that has plurality of standard fields and an extended field. At least some of the plurality of standard fields and the extended field are preferably associated with an element of data transferred between the active file and the external file. The primary data structure will have a directive field that is set by the application when a data transfer between the files is desired. A translator configured to extract the element of data from one of the active file and external file in response to the directive field being set by the application is provided. The translator is further configured to place the extracted data into the primary data structure when the application sets the directive field to implement at least one of the plurality of standard fields, thereby operating in a standard mode. On the other hand, the translator is configured to allocate a secondary data structure and place the extracted data into the secondary data structure when the application sets the directive field to implement the extended field, and thereby operating in an extended mode.

This invention discloses a software mechanism for installing and identifying compression/decompression procedures thereby providing dynamic linking, while also supporting existing and future CODEC algorithms. The present procedure is a dynamically linked library installed as an entry in the system initialization file. Each entry is comprised of a four character code which uniquely identifies a file format, a compression type, and a compression subtype. Additional CODEC information in the entry of the system initialization file are the file name, the procedure name, the processing speed, and other attributes of compression algorithms. This method combined with the installed entry in the initialization file allows sharing of the same CODEC algorithm for different file formats and also provides for an existing application program to continue working, without modification, even at such time as when a new CODEC algorithm is added to the file format in a future installation.

A method and apparatus for binding network identities to locally-meaningful identities in a computer network is disclosed. A client computer is connected to a server computer that performs various functions requested by an operator of the client computer. The server computer assigns a temporary locally-meaningful identity to the operator of the client computer, and receives and responds to requests to perform functions from the client computer. The server computer triggers an ownership fault in response to a particular request received from the client computer. The particular request that triggers the ownership fault may be a request to create a file, a request to create a directory, a request to take ownership of an existing file, a request to take ownership of an existing directory, or other function. In response to the ownership fault, the server computer assigns a permanent local identity to the network identity associated with the operator of the client computer in response to the ownership fault depending on its security policy. The permanent local identity may be retrieved from a pool of previously allocated locally-meaningful identities maintained by the server computer, or the permanent local identity may be created as needed. Once the assignment occurs, the server computer maps the permanent local identity to the network identity by updating its records.