Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Anthony Dean Andrews

Brian C Beckman

Lucius Gregory Meredith

Marc Levy

Amit Mital

Bimal Kumar Mehta

Raymond Edward Ozzie

George P Moromisato

Satish Ramchandra Thatte

Noah Benjamin Edelstein

Abhay Vinayak Parasnis

William D Devlin

Alexander A Armanasu

Akash Jeevan Sagar

Sriram K Rajamani

Richard Douglas Hill

Johannes Klein

Rebecca Ann Norlander

Niels Jakob Rehof

Patrick James Helland

Donald James McCrady

Shaz Qadeer

Terry J Myerson

Cédric Fournet

Arunchallam S Sivakumar

Jakob Rehob

Yichen Xie

Mitra Kanchan

Charles Antony Richard Hoare

Gregory Lucius Meredith

Data files, applications and/or corresponding user interfaces may be accessed at a device that collaborates in a mesh. The mesh may include any number or type of devices that collaborate in a network. Data, applications and/or corresponding user interfaces may be stored within a core object that may be shared over the mesh. Information in the core object may be identified with a corresponding user such that a user may use any collaborating device in the mesh to access the information. In one example, the information is stored remotely from a device used to access the information. A remote source may store the desired information or may determine the storage location of the desired information in the mesh and may further provide the desired information to a corresponding user.

Mesh-managing data across a distributed set of devices

Systems, methods, and user interfaces for gathering and using awareness information with common awareness functionality accessible to multiple applications are disclosed. Such systems, methods, and user interfaces may aggregate awareness information from multiple sources and provide awareness data and other derived information to multiple destinations. In some implementations, such systems and methods may provide additional functionality related to awareness information, such as common user interfaces that display awareness information or mechanisms for determining the relevance of particular pieces of awareness information.

Gathering and using awareness information

A distributed software system of communicating software components can be tested for undesirable behavior. A specification of a component can be substituted in place of the component when testing a model of the distributed software system. Thus, the system can be checked to see if it exhibits undesirable behavior without having code for all components of the system. Also, a component can be checked to see if it is in conformance with its specification. If models built with respective components and substituted specifications indicate that the system does not exhibit undesirable behavior, and the components conform to their specifications, then a system assembled from the components will not exhibit the undesirable behavior. Thus, collaborative testing can be achieved, even if no one entity has access to code for the entire distributed system.

Analysis of distributed software systems via specification substitution

A method for executing a schedule in a workflow application is provided. The method includes selectively storing a schedule state to a storage medium based on a latency attribute associated with the schedule. Also provided is a method of executing a workflow application comprising long running transactions. This method includes selectively storing a schedule state to a storage medium based on a latency attribute associated with the schedule, and selectively compensating certain actions within the schedule according to a compensation parameter associated with an action, based on failure or abortion of another action within the schedule. In addition, there is provided a method of executing a schedule comprising selectively compensating certain actions or transactions within the schedule according to a compensation parameter associated with an action or transaction, based on failure or abortion of another action or transaction within the schedule.

Long running transaction integration with selective dehydration and selective compensation

Methods and systems are provided for automatically generating an accurate model of communications processes between disparate computing systems that may be analyzed in an efficient manner for error detection in web services systems. Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) descriptions are automatically generated for the BPEL-based executable processes utilized by each communicating computing system in a given web services system. The BPEL abstract process descriptions for each communicating computing system are translated into a combined process model according to a suitable modeling language. The process model is tested by a model checking software application. Communications errors between the disparate computing systems are detected by automatically testing the combined process model according to a variety of potential communications scenarios.

Error detection in web services systems

The state space of modeled software can be explored using an object-based systematic state explorer. The object-based model can perform well even in light of the complexities of concurrent software. During state space exploration, differences between states can be stored instead of storing a complete copy of the state.

Object-based systematic state space exploration of software

A methodology of reducing process algebra to a language that facilitates modeling a business workflow process is provided. A process algebra is reduced to a model for business workflow processes. The model is then reduced to a scheduling programming language to allow users to create models of business process by selecting between features of the model and conventional modeling features. The scheduling programming language can be represented as a graphical user interface program that is convertible to a schedule language written in a programmable language. The present invention provides for explicitly representing parallelism within the business workflow process by separating interdependent transactions from independent transactions. The isolation of certain transactions are relaxed, such that users can define transactional boundaries in order to increase granularity of the transaction at an action level and provide visibility of transactions at intermediate steps.

Model for business workflow processes

A methodology of employing a binding for interfacing a business workflow process executable program to a real world implementation. The binding can be reduced to a programming language. A preferable programming language is XML (Extensible Markup Language). Separation of the business workflow processes and the binding allow for the same business workflow process to be implemented across a variety of different technologies. The binding maps ports and messages to corresponding units of codes and invocations of a particular technology being utilized for the modeling of the business workflow process. The binding provides a user with the ability to structure schedule messages, define the relationship of schedule ports to units of code, define the relationship of schedule actions to invocations, control the flow of data between messages, provide details of schedule conditionals and specify the interaction of the schedule with specific technology behaviors.

Binding for business workflow processes

An error-handling framework is provided for business process transactions. The error-handling framework facilitates coordination of the invocation of exception and compensation handlers in response to errors. The error-handling framework includes support for custom ordering of compensation actions, data flow into and out of compensation actions, and management of the process state visible to compensation actions.

Compensation framework for long running transactions

A graphical user interface (GUI) scheduler program is provided for modeling business workflow processes. The GUI scheduler program includes tools to allow a user to create a schedule for business workflow processes based on a set of rules defined by the GUI scheduler program. The rules facilitate deadlock not occurring within the schedule. The program provides tools for creating and defining message flows between entities. Additionally, the program provides tools that allow a user to define a binding between the schedule and components, such as COM components, script components, message queues and other workflow schedules. The scheduler program allows a user to define actions and group actions into transactions using simple GUI scheduling tools. The schedule can then be converted to executable code in a variety of forms such as XML, C, C+ and C++. The executable code can then be converted or interpreted for running the schedule.

System and method utilizing a graphical user interface of a business process workflow scheduling program

A method for executing a schedule in a workflow application is provided. The method comprises a hierarchical transaction commit rule allowing access to the data associated with an action in the schedule according to a transaction boundary and the state of the action. The invention further comprises selectively compensating at least one action according to a compensation parameter and at least one transaction boundary after abortion of another action. The invention further provides storing schedule state information to a storage medium based on a transaction boundary within the schedule. In addition, the invention provides for selectively obtaining at least a portion of the schedule state information from the storage medium, and selectively monitoring the schedule execution based on at least a portion of the schedule information obtained from the storage medium. Further provided, is a computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the steps of the above methods.

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Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Anthony Dean Andrews