DETAILED ACTION
A. This action is in response to the following communications: Transmittal of New Application filed 04/11/2024.
B. Claims 1-20 remains pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
1a. The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
1b. The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
2. Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
3. Claim 4 contains the trademark/trade name GRAFANA and DYNATRACE. Where a trademark or trade name is used in a claim as a limitation to identify or describe a particular material or product, the claim does not comply with the requirements of 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph. See Ex parte Simpson, 218 USPQ 1020 (Bd. App. 1982). The claim scope is uncertain since the trademark or trade name cannot be used properly to identify any particular material or product. A trademark or trade name is used to identify a source of goods, and not the goods themselves. Thus, a trademark or trade name does not identify or describe the goods associated with the trademark or trade name. In the present case, the trademark/trade name is used to identify/describe observability application/service and, accordingly, the identification/description is indefinite.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
4. In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
5. The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
6. Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being Nixon, Mark J. et al. (US Pub. 2024/0028006 A1), herein referred to as “Nixon”.
As for claims 1, 11 and 17, Nixon teaches. A device of claim 1 and corresponding medium of 11 and method of 17, comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising (par. 20 describes hardware environment that is cable of implementing invention):
in response to a microservice being deployed via a microservices platform, retrieving threshold data that indicates alert thresholds for operational metrics of the microservice platform (Establishing what the prior art defines Microservices as and their interaction with what is called “compute fabric”, which is found in Par. 75 micro-encapsulated execution environments (“MEEES,” also referred to herein as “microservices” or “granules”) Par. 76 a microservice, granule, or MEEE which is instantiated in the compute fabric may be an independent software process that can run on its own deployment schedule and can be updated independently of other microservices; Examples of MEEEs may include function blocks, control modules, control applications, and other applications and services which relate to business logic of the process plant and/or otherwise support the process plant, to name a few. Groups of microservices or MEEEs may interact collaboratively to achieve some desired outcome. par. 20 Compute Fabric : “A next generation process plant and industrial control and/or automation system architecture enables significant amounts of both computer processing and IT infrastructure that is used to support a process plant, an industrial control facility or other automation facility”); par. 322 the compute fabric based control is viewed by user through user interface in which alerts are displayed therein at par. 335; par. 355 another example of alerts and thresholds for alerting within a user interface dashboard);
based on the threshold data, generating a template applicable to an observability application or service of the microservices platform, wherein the template comprises settings for user interface elements of a dashboard usable to monitor operation of the microservice via the microservice platform and wherein the observability application or service is configured to determine a state of the microservice (par. 328 configuration of template that allows a user editing control for creating a dashboard of applications from microservices that will monitor from broad enterprise level to granule controls of monitored device/sensors); and
generating the dashboard that is usable to monitor operation of the microservice in response to inputting the template and the threshold data to the observability application or service (par.322-324 describes the dashboard user interface for a user to create hierarchical view of physical process equipment; finer details and functionality are defined throughout to at least par. 338).
As for Claim 11 A non-transitory computer-readable medium with instructions to perform operations similar to claim 1 (par. 20 is hardware environment discussed), including generating dashboards in response to parsing openAPI specifications and source code to determine custom metrics, updating templates and threshold data, and updating operational metric values during microservice operation via API calls (par. 288 users or operators associated with the enterprise may interface with the compute fabric via user interfaces and APIs to perform monitoring, configuration and operational activities with respect to the containers within the compute fabric to, for example, visualize and control the operation of the control systems executed by or implemented by the containers to control the equipment at the physical locations).
As for Claim 17 A method corresponding to the device claims (par. 20 is hardware environment discussed), including receiving threshold data upon microservice deployment, generating a template for an observability application or service, and generating the dashboard (par. 324, 328 dashboard user interface creation and editing, use of library of templates for user to utilize).
As for claim 2, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 1, wherein threshold data is retrieved in response to the microservice being committed to a build pipeline of the microservices platform (par. 280 building a pipeline platform for microservice/MEEE/granule of compute fabric).
As for claim 3, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 1, wherein threshold data and the operational metrics are specific to the microservices platform (par. 342 dashboard user interface; par. 343 setting up from template library application for monitoring and reporting alerts along with other input/outputs that the user wants to monitor).
As for claim 4, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 1, wherein observability application or service is at least one of a Grafana application or service or a Dynatrace application or service (Grafana and Dynatrace are trademarks for monitoring applications; par. 320 comprehensive observability platform designed to provide full-stack monitoring, analytics, and automation for modern cloud environments).
As for claims 5 and 12, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 1 and corresponding medium of 11, wherein the generating the dashboard further comprises generating the dashboard in response to parsing an openAPI specification (par. 384 generating dashboard and access applications through provider APIs over dedicated VPNs).
As for claim 6,13 and 18, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 1 and corresponding medium of 11 and method of 17, wherein the operations further comprise, in response to parsing source code for the microservice, determining a custom metric that is not included among the operational metrics of the microservices platform (par. 340 parsed status codes used for monitoring assets at physical sites of enterprise location and reporting various metrics of data via the dashboard user interface).
As for claim 7, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 6, wherein the custom metric is determined in response to identification, within the source code, of an annotation supported by a custom library (par. 31/184 annotation/tags of input and outputs reference values and the like for forming a configured/ programmed controller service; par. 329 an enterprise-level standard management functionality to allow a user to define fonts, naming standards, configuration practices, graphics, and/or other standards for use across a part or whole of the enterprise NGPCAS, and push the standards across the part or whole of the enterprise NGPCAS to modify enterprise functionalities to utilize the defined standards; [0330] a process entity configuration functionality to define any particular process entity installed or operating in any particular physical site (e.g., by importing the entity from the template object library or from another site and defining various parameters for the entity such as a device name, device tag, setpoint, data input/output, process material input/output, event behavior, alarm condition, etc.);.
As for claim 8, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 6, wherein the custom metric is a counter determined in response to identification, within the source code, of the counter that is supported by a custom registry (par. 263 registry associated with devices, options and other metrics; par. 270 customization by user; par. 324 defining dashboard user interface which is customized and access template library among other libraries/database for access a plurality of application some of which are used for monitoring and making sense of raw data output/input to enterprise devices).
As for claims 9, 14 and 19, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 6 and corresponding medium of 13 and method of 18, wherein the operations further comprise updating the template to incorporate the custom metric (par. 324-330 custom setting within dashboard set up and using templates from a template library).
As for claims 10, 15 and 20, Nixon teaches. The device of claim 6 and corresponding medium of 13 and method of 18, wherein the operations further comprise updating the threshold data to incorporate the custom metric with the operational metrics and to incorporate an alert threshold associated with the custom metric to the alert thresholds (par.324 and 335 alerts displayed on dashboard user interface during monitoring of devices of enterprise).
As for claim 16, Nixon teaches. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise, during the operation of the microservice, performing an application programming interface call to the observability application or service, and updating a value for an operational metric, of the operational metrics, of the dashboard based on a response to the application programming interface call (par.327,330,335 alert triggered based upon observed data from monitored devices utilization API of devices from aid of templates accessed from template library).
(Note :) It is noted that any citation to specific, pages, columns, lines, or figures in the prior art references and any interpretation of the references should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. In re Heck, 699 F.2d 1331, 1332-33, 216 USPQ 1038, 1039 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006,1009, 158 USPQ 275, 277 (CCPA 1968)).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
AUTOMATED TEST INPUT GENERATION FOR INTEGRATION TESTING OF MICROSERVICE-BASED WEB APPLICATIONS
Document ID
US 20180039565 A1
Date Published
2018-02-08
Abstract
Techniques for automated generation of inputs for testing microservice-based applications are provided. In one example, a computer-implemented method comprises: traversing, by a system operatively coupled to a processor, a user interface of a microservices-based application by performing actions on user interface elements of the user interface; and generating, by the system, an aggregated log of user interface event sequences and application program interface call sets based on the traversing. The computer-implemented method also comprises: determining, by the system, respective user interface event sequences that invoke application program interface call sets; and generating, by the system, respective test inputs based on the user interface event sequences that invoke the application program interface call sets.
Microservices Version State Visualization
Document ID
US 10241778 B2
Date Published
2019-03-26
Abstract
In one embodiment, configuration information for a microservices application is obtained, the microservices application comprising a plurality of microservice containers, and the configuration information comprising version information for each of the plurality of microservice containers. A graphical representation of the microservices application is displayed, wherein the graphical representation of the microservices application comprises a representation of each of the plurality of microservice containers. It is determined, based on the version information, whether each of the plurality of microservice containers is updated or outdated. A graphical indication of an updated microservice container is displayed; a graphical indication of an outdated microservice container is displayed; and a graphical indication of an extent to which the outdated microservice container is out-of-date is displayed.
Inquires
Any inquiry concerning this communication should be directed to NICHOLAS AUGUSTINE at telephone number (571)270-1056.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
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/NICHOLAS AUGUSTINE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2178 January 14, 2026