MONITORING METHOD AND MONITORING SYSTEM FOR MERCHANDISE TERM OF VALIDITY

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To monitor the term of validity of merchandise regardless of an application and a device program and to prevent the alteration of validity management information. SOLUTION: Between the side of a first OS 104 where a monitored AP 102 which performs general job processing and device processing and an AP term monitor 103 which monitors it are installed and the side of a second OS 106 where a term monitoring part 105 storing term of validity information data is installed, the activation information of the monitored AP 102 is exchanged by using an inter-OS message communicating function through a multi OS control part 107. The AP term monitor 103 monitors the activation of the monitored AP 102 at all times and transmits activation request information through the multi OS control part 107 to the validity monitoring part 105 on the side of the second OS 106 when the activation of the monitored AP 102 is requested. The activation monitoring part 105 accesses information stored in a term monitoring control information table and determines whether or not validity is expired and the AP term monitor 103 executes whether or not to activate the monitored AP 102 on the basis of the result. COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO