Patent ID: 7853943

Claim:
A method of monitoring for updates relating to software applications on a client system, the method including: receiving a unique identification communicated from the client system to a server system, the unique identification identifying the client system and used by the server system to access a database maintained by the server system to identify a plurality of software applications on the client system; transmitting a file from the server system, the file including commands for execution on the client system and pertaining to the plurality of software applications on the client system; and, in response to the client system's (1) parsing the file in a parser on the client system to identify the commands, (2) executing the commands on the plurality of software applications, the commands executed to collect information pertaining to the plurality of software applications on the client system, and (3) transmitting the collected information to the server system; receiving the collected information from the client system; performing a comparison at the server system between the collected information and a most updated update package for the software applications to determine which files are needed to update the software application on the client system, wherein the most-updated update package for the software application is stored in a database, and transmitting at least one download file in response to the collected information, the at least one download file including a command to ask a user to install an application now or later.