International Business Machines Corporation

Daniel James Matthews

Ian Robinson

Andrew Wilkinson

Simon J Maple

Jon Hawkes

Stephen James Todd

Kathryn Sarah Warr

Sara L Mitchell

David Pitcher

Sara Louise Mitchell

WS-Addressing EndpointReferences represent Web service endpoints and are propagated in the SOAP Envelope as part of Web service interactions. There is disclosed a method, apparatus and computer program for resolving (or modifying) aspects of the EndpointReference at the time of its propagation based on the EndpointReference recipient. Different recipients will potentially receive differing EndpointReferences. Aspects of the EndpointReference are re-resolved as the SOAP XML representing the EndpointReference is generated for the EndpointReference's propagation. For example, the location of the recipient might make a difference to the address propagated&#x2014;if the recipient is outside a firewall, it may be appropriate to provide the recipient with the address of the firewall itself and to allow the firewall to re-route any request from the data to the web service endpoint. Alternatively, metadata contained within the EndpointReference might vary depending on the recipient&#x2014;policy metadata contained within the EndpointReference might specify more stringent security requirements depending on the recipient.

Method, apparatus and computer program for modifying an endpoint reference representing a web service endpoint

An indication is provided to a transaction participant as part of a message originating from a transaction coordinator. The message indicates that the transaction coordinator supports a heuristic response. The transaction coordinator coordinates commitment of transactions as requested by an application in response to a determination by the transaction participant of a heuristic outcome. Heuristic outcomes include situations where transaction participants determine they are unable to honor transactional prior prepared commitments made to the transaction coordinator during first prepare phases of two-phase commits associated with the transactions. The heuristic response is received from the transaction participant in association with a transaction coordinated by the transaction coordinator and indicates that the transaction participant is unable to honor a transactional prior prepared commitment made by the transaction participant during a first prepare phase of a two-phase commit associated with the transaction coordinated by the transaction coordinator as requested by the application.

Heuristics processing

The invention provides a mechanism for a transaction coordinator to indicate to a transaction participant that it supports a heuristic outcome, where a course of action has occurred which means that the transaction participant is unable to honor a transactional prior commitment to the transaction coordinator. The mechanism is such that a transaction participant that is incapable of communicating a heuristic outcome may ignore any such indication. A transaction participant may be incapable because it does not understand the concept of a heuristic outcome at all or because it does not have the ability to inform the transaction coordinator that a heuristic outcome has occurred.

A method, apparatus and computer program for validating that a client's request has been routed to an appropriate server hosting a specific stateful web service instance in a system comprising a plurality of stateful web service instances. The specific stateful web service instance is one which has required state data for processing the client's request. A request is received for processing by a web service instance. Any identity data is extracted from the request. The identity data uniquely identifies the required state data and the identity of the target server that hosts that state data. It is then determined whether the target server identity matches that of the server that has received the client's request and responsive to a negative determination, a routing failure is reported.

Validating routing of client requests to appropriate servers hosting specific stateful web service instances

A messaging system and method are provided to enable transactional work, done as a result of a recipient processing an asynchronous message, to be involved in the transaction under which message was sent. Involvement may be directly in the senders transaction or indirectly through a separate transaction which can be a subordinate to, a child of, or merged with the transaction under which message was sent. The message is delivered by calling an operation, a definition of which has been registered for the queue. If the message is added to a queue for subsequent delivery to a recipient, details of the transaction under which message was sent are added to the message. As a result the recipient can take appropriate action to ensure that any transactional work, it causes to happen, will be done directly or indirectly under the scope of the transactions under which message was sent.

Growing community of inventors

Southampton, United Kingdom

Daniel James Matthews