Lucent Technologies Inc.

Bonnie Lewis Prokopowicz

Dale F Rathunde

John H Pokropinski

Reginald L Allen

Michael James Morgan

James P Schoonover

Debra K Haddad

Susan A Lee

Raymond D Smith

A method and an apparatus for providing scalable layers of highly available applications using loosely coupled commercially available computers. The software running on the loosely coupled computers is divided into three layers: the system layer, the platform layer, and the application layer, each having its own process group activation and fault recovery strategy. A process group contains software processes that depend upon a set of resources common to the process group. In addition to depending upon a common set of resources, processes within a process group share a fault recovery strategy. Fault recovery is performed at the process group level, such that if one process within a process group fails, fault recovery is takes place for all processes within the process group. In the preferred embodiment, an application layer process group may be paired with another application layer process group on a separate computer. As part of certain escalated process group fault recovery strategies, upon taking an application layer process group out of service, its paired application layer process group, if any exists, takes over performing the functions of the process group that was taken out of service.

Method and apparatus for providing scaleable levels of application

A method providing updates of feature package application processes, including changing data storage structures, in a controlled manner without losing call data. A service package application field update (SPAFU) process and a replacement feature process are started on the adjunct processor system. The SPAFU process is designed to interact with both the existing and new feature processes, and, is in communication with both. For changed data structures, a mapping is created in the SPAFU process that maps the old data to the new data. For each subscriber to the feature process, the SPAFU process waits until a subscriber is not actively using the feature, and temporarily blocks calls to that feature for the selected subscriber by refusing requests for use of that feature from the subscriber, reads the database structure associated with the subscriber, applies the mapping, and populates the database structure associated with that subscriber in the new feature process. The service block is then removed and the subscriber is then serviced by the new feature process.

Service package field update for a-i-net SCN and SCP

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Oak Park, IL, United States of America

Bonnie Lewis Prokopowicz