Patent ID: 7512681
Filing Date: 2009-03-31
Classification: G03G,G06F,H04L,H04N

Abstract:
1. A method of extracting status information related to a monitored device communicatively coupled to a network using an HTTP communication protocol, comprising: retrieving, from a first memory, vendor and model information of the monitored device; retrieving, based on the vendor and model information, at least one implementation identifier, each implementation identifier identifying a corresponding access function configured to access the monitored device using the HTTP protocol to obtain the status information, wherein the at least one implementation identifier identifies at least one of (1) a first access function configured to obtain the device information from between tags in a web page stored on the monitored device, and (2) a second access function configured to obtain the device information from within a script in the web page; selecting an implementation identifier of the at least one implementation identifier; retrieving, from the first memory based on the vendor and model information and the selected implementation identifier, parameter values used to obtain the status information from the web page using the access function corresponding to the implementation identifier; accessing the monitored device using the HTTP protocol, the parameter values, and the access function corresponding to the implementation identifier to attempt to obtain the status information; storing, in a second memory, the status information obtained in the accessing step, in association with the vendor and model information; storing, in a third memory, all implementation identifiers for the HTTP protocol in association with a corresponding boolean value, wherein the boolean value for each identifier is initialized to a value of false; and for each implementation identifier in the retrieved at least one implementation identifier, setting the boolean value associated with the implementation identifier to a value of true.