Architecture of interconnected kiosk systems

Architecture of interconnected kiosk systems

   The idea is to use a hierarchical and object-oriented
organization of the kiosk network.  Each single kiosk of the network
has the following features:
  1.  Each kiosk may - independently of other kiosks - establish
       an interconnection to another kiosk, in order to ask for
       the latest version of the other kiosk's content and to
       obtain a copy of said latest version.
  2.  Each kiosk is able to respond to another kiosk's request
       for the latest version of contents, and may transfer a
       version of its actual contents to said requesting kiosk.
  3.  Timers are implemented at each kiosk, which cause a
       certain, prespecified event in case of a time-out.  These
       timers may be set or changed by one (or more than one)
       administrating kiosk(s).
  4.  Each kiosk possesses local configuration data, which
       allows to identify the administrating kiosk and the
       respective update server corresponding to said kiosk.
  5.  An administrating kiosk may modify both configuration
       data and timer data of related kiosks via the network
       interconnecting the kiosks.

   When setting up the kiosk network, the following rules
have to be obeyed to:
  1.  To each edit kiosk a distinguished domain of contents is
       assigned.  Both the extent of and the access rights to
       said domain are established by means of a hierarchically
       superordinated edit kiosk.
  2.  All data and objects of a certain domain may only be
       modified by the responsible edit kiosk.
  3.  Each object belonging to a kiosk's content is
       unambiguously assigned to one of the domains.
  4.  Each kiosk that is not an edit kiosk itself is
       assigned to at least one update server kiosk
       (is-update-server-kiosk-of-relation).
  5.  In case a kiosk is not an ed...