Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Andrew F Held

Edward K Y Jung

Paul J Leach

Pradyumna K Misra

Nathaniel S Brown

Michael R Seaman

Richard Kane Sailor

A method and system for transparently executing code using a surrogate process is provided. In a preferred embodiment, the underlying system provides a surrogate program that can execute server dynamic-link libraries. When a client program wishes to access an object of a sharable class or a class factory object, the client program requests a service control manager to execute the server code for the sharable class. In response, the service control manager determines from a registration database whether the server code is available in the form of a server executable or a server dynamic-link library. If the server code is implemented as a server dynamic-link library, the service control manager either returns the location of the server dynamic-link library to the client program to be run in the execution context of the client program or the service control manager launches the surrogate program and requests it to load the server dynamic-link library, thereby isolating the server dynamic-link library from the client program execution context. When the surrogate process is launched, the surrogate process loads the requested server dynamic-link library and instantiates class factory objects corresponding to the sharable classes implemented by the server dynamic-link library. In one embodiment, multiple server dynamic-link libraries can be loaded within the same surrogate process. According to this embodiment, when the client program requests access to an object of a sharable class or to a class factory object, the service control manager determines whether the server code that implements the object can be loaded in a surrogate process that is already executing or whether a new surrogate process needs to be launched. Once the server dynamic-link library is loaded in the surrogate process and a reference to a server object returned to the client program, the client program can communicate with the server code in the same manner as if the server code had been loaded into the execution context of the client program.

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Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Andrew F Held