Patent ID: 8010958

Claim:
A program managing system, comprising: a plurality of data processing apparatuses and a program managing apparatus connected to a network, the program managing apparatus supplying control programs to the data processing apparatuses, wherein the program managing apparatus sends at least program updating data and update timing conditions to each of the data processing apparatuses, the program updating data including setting of retention periods of the control programs, and also sends requests for deleting the control programs retained in the data processing apparatuses, the program managing apparatus is provided with a control program managing portion for obtaining and saving the control programs used and retained in each of the data processing apparatuses that are sent from the data processing apparatuses, each of the data processing apparatuses, when the program updating data is sent from the program managing apparatus, saves the data in a storage device, and executes an update of the control program at a time when the respective data processing apparatus is not in operation, the respective data processing apparatus retains the control program that is not updated, saves information on the control program that the respective data processing apparatus is using and retaining, and sends the information to the program managing apparatus, each of the data processing apparatuses being configured to update the control program that is in current use, each of the data processing apparatuses being configured to delete the control program if the retention period of the control program is expired upon receiving a request for deleting the control program, each of the data processing apparatuses is provided with a control program updating portion for deleting the control program depending on its retention period when available space of the storage device is insufficient.