Patent ID: 8185622

Claim:
A system comprising: a multiplicity of functional entities having a printer section; and a server that monitors a condition of each of the functional entities, which are connected to the server by individual connections through a network, the server assigning an individual recognition identification to each of the individual connections; wherein each of the functional entities is assigned one of different kinds of identification information, the identification information corresponding to a description of at least one of features and capabilities of a specified functional entity, the description including at least one of a serial number and a type identification number, wherein the server includes a multiple associative map structure device which includes an access information structure to access the description of at least one of the features and the capabilities of the specified functional entity which corresponds to the identification information, wherein each kind of the different kinds of identification information is associated with a particular associative map of multiple associative maps stored in the multiple associative map structure device, and wherein the server forms pointers with a data format specifying the individual recognition identification of an individual connection and one of the different kinds of identification information, the pointers allowing the access to the particular associative map.