Patent ID: 7292579

Claim:
A method for processing operations associated with resources on a local network, comprising; receiving periodic messages containing resource information from network devices connected to the local network wherein the resource information includes at least one of user-requestable services offered by the network device and data stored by the network device having a MIME type; storing a timestamp and resource information from each of the messages in a repository; determining from the stored timestamp and resource information which of the at least one of user-requestable services and data having a MIME type were available on the network over a predetermined time period, wherein the predetermined time period includes a past time period which is different from a present time period; and generating a view of the at least one of user-requestable services and data having a MIME type that were available on the network over the predetermined period, including the past time period, thereby enabling generation of current, past, and dynamic views of the at least one of user-requestable services offered by devices connected to the network and the data having a MIME type stored by the devices.