International Business Machines Corporation

Harold Jeffrey Gartner

Michael Beisiegel

Piotr Przybylski

Vladimir Klicnik

John Henry Green

John Wright Stephenson

Michael Starkey

Ilene Ruth Seelemann

Norman K W Seto

In one aspect of the present invention a framework is presented for the generation and execution of code performing conversion to and from an arbitrary native or 'wire' data format. The code facilitates a business application using a service provided by a service implementation in accordance with a native language of the implementation which may be different from the language of the business application. The main components of the framework include a model of the information necessary for the formatting of data which may be represented through the extensions to WSDL; a tool time support environment providing structured support for the generation of format handlers; and runtime support for the generated format handlers. In an alternative to this static invocation model, a dynamic usage scenario provides for invocation of format handlers dynamically obtained from a format handler factory. In both cases, the runtime uses a lazy approach to the conversion to and from the native format for improved performance. The framework is particularly suited to resource adapters for adapting an EIS service implementation for use with a business application desiring a service from the EIS.

Mapping to and from native type formats

Mapping of a first native data type instance to a second native data type instance is performed in three stages: the first native data type instance is converted into a first programming language and platform independent representation conforming to a first schema capable of defining base and derived data types; the first programming language and platform independent representation is transformed into a second programming language and platform independent representation conforming to a second schema capable of defining base and derived data types; and the second programming language and platform independent representation is converted into the second native data type instance. The programming language and platform independent representations may be event-based extensible Markup Language (XML) representations implemented according to the Simple API for XML (SAX). The transformation may be governed by an extensible Stylesheet Language Transform (XSLT) stylesheet.

Mapping between native data type instances

Methods, systems and articles of manufacture comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means therein are directed to a framework for representation and manipulation of record oriented data. Particularly, the framework of the present invention provides access from applications written in a computer programming language, preferably the Java language, to records created by an application written in another programming language by describing and correctly converting record data in such records. In a preferred embodiment, the framework is designed in and for the Java language, has a concrete class implementation written in Java capable of handling C language data types and provides the ability to access stored or sent records, created by an application written in the C language, from applications written in the Java language. The framework also provides a set of mechanisms to be used by record builder tools.

Framework for representation and manipulation of record oriented data

A framework having a plurality of directories representing different types of middlewares and distributed object systems can be constructed from data provided in a class library. Each directory includes the name and address of all service objects, located across multiple servers in the system, that supports the specific middleware or distributed object policy characteristics for that directory. One service object may be addressed through multiple directories. When a remote method call is issued by a client, a list of service objects capable of executing the call is obtained from the directories and one object selected. The policy characteristics associated with the directory from which the object address is selected, are attached to the call. These characteristics are validated when the addressed server receives the call. In this way, a client program can be written entirely independently of the middleware or peculiarity of implementation of the distributed object service.

Growing community of inventors

Thornhill, Canada

Harold Jeffrey Gartner