Method and system for efficient and automated version management of embedded objects in web documents

DETAILED DESCRIPTION A.
An Exemplary Embodiment For convenience, the techniques herein will be described with respect to "documents" (or, equivalently, "files") which should be understood to include any content-bearing items transmitted in a networked environment, including, without limitation, text, data or graphic files (or combinations thereof), images, objects, programs, scripts, audio, video, and other kinds of documents.
More specifically, one embodiment is described with respect to HTML documents carrying embedded objects, but those skilled in the art will understand that the techniques described with respect to this exemplary embodiment readily extend to other forms of documents deliverable on a network.
The system contemplates one or more computers and software running thereon.
The computers may be connected by any wired or wireless network including, without limitation, the internet and intranets.
The server and/or user/browser computer(s) may be any mainframe, microcomputer, personal computer, web-enabled PDA, cell phone, or other hand-held device, internet television, or other types of devices, with software implemented in Java, C++, or any other language.
In a preferred embodiment, a proxy server acts a transparent proxy to a content server.
When a user makes a request for a web document from the content server, the request is received by the proxy, and then transparently passed to the content server.
The content server then responds with the document containing URL (or other resource locator) references to one or more embedded objects.
These objects may be HTML or WML files, GIF or JPEG images, audio, style sheets, script files or objects of yet other types.
The proxy then requests each object that is embedded within the document from the content server, and receives each object with a header containing several fields (individually and/or collectively comprising cacheability information) assigned by the content server.
As a matter of convenience, we will continue to describe a HTTP embodiment in which the fields (and corresponding rules), that are of relevance to us include at least the following: