Patent attributes
Preferred embodiments of the invention provide a method and system for processing operations associated with resources on a local network. Aspect of the invention include receiving periodic messages containing resource information from network devices connected to the local network, wherein the resource information includes user-requestable services offered by the network device, and data stored by the network device having a mime type. The resource information from each of the messages and a timestamp are stored in a repository. From the stored timestamp and resource information it can be determined which user-requestable services and data having a mime type were available on the network over a predetermined time period. A view of the user-requestable services and data having a mime type that were available on the network over the predetermined period can then be generated, thereby enabling generation of current, past, and dynamic views of the user-requestable services offered by devices connected to the network and the data having a mime type stored by the devices. In a further embodiment, the system enables operations associated with the resources to be performed or scheduled at a time when the resources are unavailable via the network by performing or scheduling the operations on the corresponding resource identifiers stored in the repository.
