US 6,983,278 B1
System and method for access control and for supply chain management via a shared bill of material
Janet Yu, San Francisco, Calif. (US); Eric Larkin, San Jose, Calif. (US); and Michael Topolovac, Monterey, Calif. (US)
Assigned to Arena Solutions, Inc., Menlo Park, Calif. (US)
Filed on Apr. 10, 2002, as Appl. No. 10/120,898.
Application 10/120898 is a continuation in part of application No. 09/832753, filed on Apr. 10, 2001.
Claims priority of provisional application 60/283061, filed on Apr. 10, 2001.
Int. Cl. G06F 17/30 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 707—9 31 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
storing a plurality of bills of material (BOMs) in a processing system, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element, each BOM being associated with an owner of a set of owners, such that BOMS associated with different owners are stored in the same processing system; and
uploading data via a network from a local file system for storage in a data server for association with a particular BOM of the BOMs, wherein the uploading includes:
selecting the data for upload and linking to the particular BOM;
requesting the upload from an application program;
receiving from the application program a redirect to the data server:
sending the data selected for upload to the data server according to the redirect;
at the data server, receiving a ticket issued and authorized by the application program;
at the data server, storing the data in encrypted form; and
linking the stored data with the particular BOM to form additional information for the particular BOM,
such that different users may be assigned different remote access privileges to the uploaded data, the assigning of privileges automatic according to the role assigned to the user or an entity of which the user is an employee.