TWM667423U - System for communication managing - Google Patents

Abstract

A communication managing system includes a processing unit and a storage unit electrically connected to the processing unit. The processing unit is configured to: when receiving an instruction data from a control end electronic device and indicating a controlled end electronic device, transmit the instruction data to the controlled end electronic device in a communication protocol suitable for the controlled end electronic device; when receiving a return data from the controlled end electronic device, determine whether the return data possesses data integrity; upon the determining result is affirmative, transmit the return data to the control end electronic device; otherwise, generate and transmit an error notification corresponding to the instruction data to the control end electronic device.

Description

Communications Management System

The present invention relates to a management system, and more particularly to a communication management system for managing the communication between a plurality of electronic devices.

With the development of communication technology, the mainstream communication standards used by electronic devices to transmit data will also change with the times.

However, for enterprises, the evolution of mainstream communication standards can easily make older electronic devices in their systems incompatible with newer electronic devices, which in turn leads to the dilemma of "overall elimination" or "phased elimination" of system hardware. Based on the above, existing technologies still have problems to be solved.

Therefore, the purpose of the present invention is to provide a communication management system that helps to overcome the inconvenience of the prior art.

The novel communication management system is suitable for use with a control end electronic device and a plurality of controlled end electronic devices. The communication management system comprises a processing unit suitable for being electrically connected to the control end electronic device and the controlled end electronic devices, and a storage unit electrically connected to the processing unit. The storage unit stores a plurality of application program interface data corresponding to the controlled end electronic devices. The processing unit is used to: when receiving a command data from the control end electronic device and indicating one of the controlled end electronic devices, take the controlled end electronic device indicated by the command data as a designated controlled end electronic device, and transmit the command data to the designated controlled end electronic device in a communication protocol applicable to the designated controlled end electronic device according to the application program interface data corresponding to the designated controlled end electronic device. The control device comprises a control unit for controlling the control end electronic device; when receiving a return data corresponding to the command data from the designated controlled end electronic device, determining whether the return data has data integrity; when determining that the return data has data integrity, transmitting the return data to the control end electronic device; when determining that the return data does not have data integrity, generating an error notification corresponding to the command data, and transmitting the error notification to the control end electronic device.

In some implementations of the novel communication management system, the processing unit determines a receiving period corresponding to the return data based on a preset time length when receiving a portion of the return data, and determines whether the return data meets a complete condition representing data integrity before the end of the receiving period. When the processing unit determines that the return data does not meet the complete condition before the end of the receiving period, the communication management system determines that the return data does not have data integrity. When the processing unit determines that the return data meets the complete condition before the end of the receiving period, the communication management system determines that the return data has data integrity.

In some implementations of the novel communication management system, the processing unit receives multiple command data parts that can together constitute the command data from the control end electronic device one by one, and stores the command data parts in a buffer. Then, according to the order in which the command data parts are stored in the buffer, the command data parts stored in the buffer are merged into the command data, and the command data is transmitted to the designated controlled end electronic device.

In some implementations of the novel communication management system, the buffer is implemented as a data queue.

The utility of the present invention is that, through the communication management system, even if the control-end electronic device and the controlled-end electronic devices cannot communicate with each other directly due to different communication standards, the communication management system can identify the designated controlled-end electronic device upon receiving the command data transmitted by the control-end electronic device, and load the application program interface data corresponding to the designated controlled-end electronic device, so as to transmit the command data to the designated controlled-end electronic device using the communication protocol applicable to the designated controlled-end electronic device, and then provide the return data from the designated controlled-end electronic device to the control-end electronic device. In this way, even if there are older electronic devices in the system of an enterprise organization that are not compatible with newer electronic devices, the enterprise organization will not be forced to eliminate the older electronic devices.

Before the present invention is described in detail, it should be noted that the term "electrically connected" in this patent specification is used to describe the coupled relationship between hardware (e.g., electronic systems, equipment, devices, units, modules, components). If not specifically defined, the term "electrically connected" generally refers to "wired electrical connection" achieved by physically connecting multiple hardware to each other through conductors/semiconductor materials, and "radio connection" achieved by wireless data transmission using wireless communication technology (e.g., but not limited to wireless networks, Bluetooth, electromagnetic induction, etc.). On the other hand, if not specifically defined, the term "electrically connected" also generally refers to "direct electrical connection" achieved by directly coupling multiple hardware to each other, and "indirect electrical connection" achieved by indirectly coupling multiple hardware through other hardware.

Before the present invention is described in detail, it should be noted that the "unit" described in this patent specification represents hardware rather than software. For example, "processing unit" is used to represent hardware with data processing functions. On the other hand, the "unit" described in this patent specification can refer to a single hardware with a specific function, or a group of hardware with similar functions. For example, "processing unit" can refer to a single processor with data processing functions, but it can also refer to a collection of a group of processors.

Referring to FIG. 1 , an embodiment of the novel communication management system 1 belongs to an enterprise organization, wherein the enterprise organization may be, for example, a bank organization. Furthermore, the communication management system 1 is applicable to be used in conjunction with a control end electronic device 50 and a plurality of controlled end electronic devices 60 belonging to the enterprise organization.

The control terminal electronic device 50 is, for example, a computer device (such as a desktop computer or a laptop computer) and is used for operation by personnel working in the enterprise organization. Specifically, for example, the control terminal electronic device 50 may be included in a new financial terminal system (also called NBT system, NBT is the abbreviation of New Banking Terminal), but is not limited to this.

In the application environment of the present embodiment, each controlled electronic device 60 may be, for example, one of a financial printer, a password input keyboard for a customer to manually input a password, a scanning device for scanning documents such as bills, payment slips and receipts, and a photographing device for taking a customer's seal or facial photo, but is not limited to these.

In actual implementation, the communication management system 1 can be used in conjunction with a plurality of control-end electronic devices at the same time. Moreover, each of the control-end electronic devices is, for example, included in one of the new financial terminal system, a remittance concentration system, a bill withdrawal system, a bill collection system, a legal deduction system, an intelligent form filling system, a note system, an intelligent folding system, a seal system, a number-taking/pre-filling form system, and an intelligent toll and tax payment system. However, for ease of understanding, the following description only uses the control-end electronic device 50 shown in FIG. 1 to illustrate this embodiment.

In this embodiment, the communication management system 1 is a server device, and the communication management system 1 includes a processing unit 11 and a storage unit 12 electrically connected to the processing unit 11.

In this embodiment, the processing unit 11 is a processor implemented with an integrated circuit and having data operation and instruction receiving and sending functions. In addition, the processing unit 11 is suitable for being electrically connected to the control end electronic device 50 and the controlled end electronic devices 60 through a network, so as to communicate with the control end electronic device 50 and the controlled end electronic devices 60. In different embodiments, the processing unit 11 can also be a circuit assembly including a processor and a circuit board, or a collection of multiple processors.

The storage unit 12 is a data storage device (such as a hard disk) for storing digital data. However, in different implementations, the storage unit 12 can also be a collection of multiple storage devices of the same or different types.

Furthermore, in other embodiments, the communication management system 1 can also be implemented as a plurality of server devices electrically connected to each other. In this case, the processing unit 11 can be implemented as a collection of a plurality of processors/circuit components respectively possessed by the server devices, and the storage unit 12 can be implemented as a collection of a plurality of storage devices respectively possessed by the server devices. Based on the above, the actual implementation of the communication management system 1 in terms of computer hardware is not limited to this embodiment.

The storage unit 12 stores a plurality of application program interface data D corresponding to the controlled electronic devices 60. Each application program interface data D is an API (Application Programming Interfaces) implemented in a program code and can be loaded and executed by the processing unit 11. Thus, the processing unit 11 can communicate with the controlled electronic device 60 corresponding to the application program interface data D by loading and executing each application program interface data D, thereby transmitting data with the controlled electronic device 60 using a communication protocol applicable to the controlled electronic device 60. The communication protocol may be, for example, a USB (Universal Serial Bus) protocol or an RS-232 protocol, but is not limited thereto.

It is to be noted that, in the present embodiment, the processing unit 11 and the control terminal electronic device 50 can communicate with each other via protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, WebSocket or TCP/IP. However, this part is not the focus of this patent specification, so it will not be described in detail here.

Referring to FIG. 2 , the following exemplarily illustrates how the communication management system 1 of this embodiment implements a communication management method.

First, in step S1, when the processing unit 11 receives a command data from the control-end electronic device 50 and indicating one of the controlled-end electronic devices 60, the processing unit 11 uses the controlled-end electronic device 60 indicated by the command data as a designated controlled-end electronic device 60' in this embodiment, and transmits the command data to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' according to the application program interface data D corresponding to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' using the communication protocol applicable to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60'.

In this embodiment, the command data is, for example, a print command data indicating the financial printer, and the command data is, for example, composed of a plurality of command data parts. Specifically, the command data parts include, for example, a parameter initialization command implemented by an Olivetti PR2 control code, data to be printed (e.g., including text data and/or image data to be printed), a printer status setting command for setting the status of the financial printer, and a print status setting command for setting the print mode of the financial printer, but the present invention is not limited thereto.

When the instruction data indicates the financial printer, the processing unit 11 will use the financial printer as the designated controlled electronic device 60' according to the instruction data, and load and execute the application program interface data D corresponding to the designated controlled electronic device 60', thereby transmitting the instruction data to the designated controlled electronic device 60' (i.e., the financial printer) using the communication protocol applicable to the financial printer (e.g., USB protocol).

More specifically, in this embodiment, the processing unit 11 receives the instruction data parts that together constitute the instruction data from the control end electronic device 50 one by one, and temporarily stores the instruction data parts in a predefined buffer (not shown) in the storage unit 12. The buffer is implemented as a first-in-first-out data queue (also called a "queue"), but is not limited thereto. Then, after the processing unit 11 receives all of the command data parts and stores all of the command data parts in the buffer, the processing unit 11 sequentially merges the command data parts stored in the buffer into the command data according to the order in which the command data parts are stored in the buffer, and transmits the merged command data to the designated controlled electronic device 60'.

It is worth noting that, by the processing unit 11 loading and executing the application program interface data D corresponding to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' according to the instruction data, even if the communication protocol applicable to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' is different from that of the control-end electronic device 50 (for example: the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' is applicable to the USB protocol, and the control-end electronic device 50 is applicable to the RS-232 protocol), the processing unit 11 can also realize the cross-protocol communication between the control-end electronic device 50 and the designated controlled-end electronic device 60'. In this way, the present embodiment enables electronic devices that originally cannot communicate with each other to communicate with each other through the communication management system 1.

On the other hand, by first storing the command data parts one by one in the buffer by the processing unit 11, and then merging the command data parts stored in the buffer into the command data, even if the transmission rates of the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' and the control-end electronic device 50 are greatly different from each other (for example: the speed at which the control-end electronic device 50 transmits data is much higher than the speed at which the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' receives data), the present embodiment can also use the buffer to temporarily store the command data to be transmitted by the control-end electronic device 50 to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60'. In this way, the time required for the control-end electronic device 50 to transmit (output) the command data will not be extended due to the slower speed at which the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' receives data.

After the processing unit 11 transmits the command data to the designated controlled electronic device 60', the process proceeds to step S2.

In step S2, when the processing unit 11 receives a return data from the designated controlled electronic device 60' and corresponding to the command data, it determines whether the return data has data integrity. The return data is generated by the designated controlled electronic device 60' according to the command data.

Specifically, in this embodiment, when receiving a portion of the return data, the processing unit 11 determines a receiving period corresponding to the return data according to a preset time length, and determines whether the return data meets a complete condition representing data integrity before the end of the receiving period. The portion of the return data may be, for example, a header portion.

More specifically, the processing unit 11 determines the receiving period based on the time point when the processing unit 11 receives the part of the return data and a receiving period parameter indicating the preset time length. The receiving period is calculated from the time point when the processing unit 11 receives the part of the return data, and the time length of the receiving period is consistent with the preset time length.

On the other hand, the integrity condition may represent, for example, that an actual data length of the return data received by the processing unit 11 matches a reference data length indicated by the header portion. However, in different embodiments, the integrity condition may also be implemented using other mechanisms such as a checksum, a cyclic redundancy check (CRC), or a parity bit check. Therefore, the actual state of the integrity condition is not limited to this embodiment.

In this embodiment, when the returned data meets the complete condition, the returned data includes, for example, a printer status value, a print status value, and a passbook magnetic stripe content read value, but is not limited thereto.

If the processing unit 11 determines that the return data meets the complete condition before the end of the receiving period, the processing unit 11 determines that the return data has data integrity (that is, the judgment result is yes). If the judgment result is yes, the process proceeds to step S3. On the contrary, if the processing unit 11 determines that the return data does not meet the complete condition before the end of the receiving period, the processing unit 11 determines that the return data does not have data integrity (that is, the judgment result is no). If the judgment result is no, the process proceeds to step S4.

It is worth noting that, for the return data that has been successfully transmitted to the communication management system 1, as long as the return data meets the complete condition before the end of the receiving period, the processing unit 11 will determine that the data has integrity. Therefore, even if the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' has an unexpected short-term transmission interruption in the process of transmitting the return data to the processing unit 11, as long as the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' can recover and complete the transmission of the return data before the end of the receiving period, the processing unit 11 can still determine that the return data has data integrity.

In step S3 following step S2, once the processing unit 11 determines that the returned data has data integrity, the processing unit 11 transmits the returned data to the control end electronic device 50 using a communication protocol applicable to the control end electronic device 50. At this point, the communication management method of this embodiment ends.

In step S4 following step S2, once the processing unit 11 determines that the return data does not have data integrity, the processing unit 11 generates an error notification corresponding to the command data, and transmits the error notification to the control-end electronic device 50 using the communication protocol applicable to the control-end electronic device 50, so that the control-end electronic device 50 can output the error notification. In this way, even if the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' cannot provide the return data for some reason (such as power outage, failure, etc.), the control-end electronic device 50 will not fall into a state of endlessly waiting for the return data. At this point, the communication management method of this embodiment ends.

The above is an example of how the communication management system 1 of this embodiment implements the communication management method.

In another implementation of the present embodiment, the instruction data described in step S1 may also be, for example, a startup instruction data indicating the password input keyboard. In this implementation, the instruction data is, for example, composed of a plurality of other instruction data parts. In addition, the instruction data parts include, for example, an initialization parameter setting instruction and a keyboard state setting instruction. In addition, when the instruction data indicates the password input keyboard, the processing unit 11 will use the password input keyboard as the designated controlled electronic device 60' according to the instruction data. Furthermore, in this implementation, the feedback data described in step S2 is generated by the password input keyboard. Furthermore, the returned data may include, for example, an initialization result parameter indicating whether the initialization is successful, and a state parameter indicating the current state of the password input keyboard (eg, an activated state or a standby state), but is not limited thereto.

It is particularly noted that steps S1 to S4 of this embodiment and the flowchart of FIG2 are only used to illustrate one of the practicable modes of the novel communication management method. It should be understood that even if steps S1 to S4 are merged, split or adjusted in sequence, if the process after merging, splitting or adjusting in sequence performs similar functions in a similar manner and obtains similar results compared with the present embodiment, it still belongs to the practicable mode of the communication management method. Therefore, steps S1 to S4 of this embodiment and the flowchart of FIG2 are not used to limit the practicable scope of the novel communication management method.

In summary, by implementing the communication management method, even if the control-end electronic device 50 and the controlled-end electronic devices 60 cannot communicate with each other directly due to different communication standards, the communication management system 1 can identify the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' upon receiving the command data transmitted by the control-end electronic device 50, and load the application program interface data D corresponding to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' to transmit the command data to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' using the communication protocol applicable to the designated controlled-end electronic device 60', and then provide the return data from the designated controlled-end electronic device 60' to the control-end electronic device 50. Thus, even if the enterprise organization's system has older electronic devices that are not compatible with newer electronic devices, the enterprise organization will not be forced to eliminate the older electronic devices, so the purpose of this innovation can be achieved.

However, the above is only an example of the implementation of the present invention, and it cannot be used to limit the scope of the implementation of the present invention. All simple equivalent changes and modifications made according to the scope of the patent application of the present invention and the content of the patent specification are still within the scope of the present patent.

1: Communication management system 11: Processing unit 12: Storage unit D: Application program interface data 50: Control end electronic device 60: Controlled end electronic device 60’: Designated controlled end electronic device S1~S4: Steps

Other features and functions of the present invention will be clearly presented in the embodiments with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram, which exemplarily shows an embodiment of the novel communication management system, as well as a control-end electronic device and a plurality of controlled-end electronic devices suitable for use with the embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart for exemplarily illustrating how the embodiment implements a communication management method.

1: Communication management system

11: Processing unit

12: Storage unit

D: Application Programming Interface Data

50: Control terminal electronic device

60: Electronic device at the controlled end

60’: Specify the electronic device at the controlled end

Claims (4)

A communication management system is suitable for use with a control-end electronic device and a plurality of controlled-end electronic devices; the communication management system comprises: a processing unit, suitable for being electrically connected to the control-end electronic device and the controlled-end electronic devices; and a storage unit, electrically connected to the processing unit, and storing a plurality of application program interface data corresponding to the controlled-end electronic devices respectively; wherein the processing unit is used for: When receiving a command data from the control end electronic device and indicating one of the controlled end electronic devices, the controlled end electronic device indicated by the command data is used as a designated controlled end electronic device, and according to the application program interface data corresponding to the designated controlled end electronic device, the command data is transmitted to the designated controlled end electronic device using a communication protocol applicable to the designated controlled end electronic device; When receiving a return data from the designated controlled end electronic device and corresponding to the command data, determine whether the return data has data integrity; When determining that the return data has data integrity, transmit the return data to the control end electronic device; and When it is determined that the returned data does not have data integrity, an error notification corresponding to the command data is generated and the error notification is sent to the control end electronic device. A communication management system as described in claim 1, wherein: The processing unit determines a receiving period corresponding to the return data according to a preset time length when receiving a part of the return data, and determines whether the return data meets a complete condition representing data integrity before the end of the receiving period; When the processing unit determines that the return data does not meet the complete condition before the end of the receiving period, the communication management system determines that the return data does not have data integrity; and When the processing unit determines that the return data meets the complete condition before the end of the receiving period, the communication management system determines that the return data has data integrity. A communication management system as described in claim 1, wherein the processing unit receives multiple command data parts that can together constitute the command data from the control-end electronic device one by one, and stores the command data parts in a buffer, and then merges the command data parts stored in the buffer into the command data according to the order in which the command data parts are stored in the buffer, and then transmits the command data to the designated controlled-end electronic device. A communication management system as described in claim 3, wherein the buffer is implemented as a data queue.

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