Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Jeffrey Bruce Parham

William Birkin Lees

Mark Robbin Brown

Murli D Satagopan

Bhalchandra Pandit

Richard L Hasha

Richard Bruce Ward

Donald J Hacherl

Brendan W Dixon

Bassam Tabbara

Gopal Krishna R Kakivaya

Andrew D Milligan

Charles R Reeves

Levon A Esibov

Nicholas J Harvey

Laszlo Lovasz

Nicholas J A Harvey

Angela Mills

Van H Vu

Lawrence A Buerk

Katalin Vesztergombi

Christian F Huitema

Gopala Krishna R Kakivaya

Praerit Garg

Geoffrey Hugh Outhred

Jeffrey C Schlimmer

Colin Harrison Brace

Eyal Schwartz

Pratul Dublish

Rajagopalan Badri Narayanan

Edward Scott Miller

Kevin D J Grealish

Don Box

Rengarajan S Raghavan

Embodiments described herein are directed to providing scalability to software applications. A computer system partitions a portion of data stored in a directory services system into multiple different data partitions. Each data partition includes a primary writable copy and at least one secondary read-only copy of the data. The computer system receives a client request for a portion of the data that is stored in the directory services system and accesses various stored partition mappings to determine which of the different data partitions includes the requested data. The computer system also accesses a dynamic copy locator to determine which of the read-only copies of the indicated partition to access and provide the accessed primary writeable copy of the indicated partition and the determined read-only copy to the client in a virtualized manner so that the client is not aware of the data partitions.

Cloud scale directory services

Automatic allocation of data replicas

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for processing identity constraints in a relational database. Values are extracted from an XML document during a submit operation. References that potentially participate in an identity constraint are identified. The reference information is stored. An identity constraint graph is generated from the stored reference information. Techniques for facilitating key-sequence comparisons are described. Techniques for identifying violations to identity constraints are described. Techniques for identifying which identity constraint graphs are affected by a new or changed document are described.

Processing identity constraints in a data store

A system and methods for service discovery and publication are disclosed. Application programs write requests for service discovery, publication, and subscription to a service discovery application programming interface. The service discovery application programming interface invokes one or more lower-level protocols to satisfy the discovery, publication and/or subscription request. Service information retrieved from lower-layer protocols is formatted into a consistent data model and returned to the client application. In addition, service information may be stored in a persistent data store managed by a discovery persistence service communicatively connected to the service discovery API.

Service discovery and publication

Embodiments are directed to synchronizing scopes between a source database and a target database without the target database specifying each scope that is to be synchronized and to determining scope changes based on service subscriptions. In one scenario, a source database receives from a target database a synchronization scopes policy corresponding to scope criteria provided by the target database. The synchronization scopes policy includes both the scope criteria and a version identifier that together identify a point-in-time snapshot of the set of scopes meeting the scope criteria as of the latest synchronization. The source database resolves the set of scopes last synchronized from the source database to the target database based on the synchronization scopes policy's scope criteria and version identifier. The source database synchronizes to the target database the changes to data in the resolved set of scopes.

Scalable policy-based database synchronization of scopes

A system and method for identifying network endpoints that provide a service of interest orders endpoints according to their network proximity to a requesting client. The requesting client may then contact the closest available providing endpoint, thus increasing the efficiency of usage of network resources while decreasing latency and enhancing reliability. In an embodiment of the invention, when a connection to the nearest providing endpoint cannot be established, a mechanism for locating a next-closest alternative endpoint is provided.

Generalized proximity service

A new method and framework for re-partitioning directory servers supporting user services in a site that receives access requests from users. According to the present invention, a management server transfers groups of directory objects from original directory servers to newly added directory servers without service interruption to users of the site. The directory objects are stored in categorical groups such that the directory objects in each group share an attribute. According to the present invention, certain groups in the original directory servers are identified for migration to the newly added servers based on a load-balancing scheme. In one embodiment, the identified groups are marked for migration to limit access to the directory objects therein. After successfully being migration, the groups are unmarked and access is resumed. In another embodiment, the management server includes a table storing location information that is updated to indicate successful transfer of the identified group of directory objects from the original server to the newly added server.

Re-partitioning directories

Modeling operational policies of operating a business's or institution's actual or planned IT system. The IT system may include components such as applications, application hosts, one or more networks or components thereof, hardware, and interrelationships between the components. The IT system is to be operated in accordance with operational policies that govern existence or numerosity of components, how the components are interrelated, how the components and interrelationships are configured, and/or manual or automated processes for managing and maintaining the IT system. The modeling may involve generating code that conforms to a language by declaring abstractions using types that correspond to the components of the IT system, by declaring types of interrelationships that correspond to the interrelationships of the IT system, and by defining constraints upon and between the abstract types, where the constraints correspond to operational policies of operating the IT system.

Modeling IT operations/policies

An improved network architecture employs a super authority having an identity catalog to direct login authentication tasks to appropriate authorities. Authentication tasks may be performed by authorities across namespace boundaries if so directed by the super authority, such that a principal account may be moved without alteration of the account ID. In an embodiment of the invention, the identity catalog comprises a listing associating account IDs with appropriate authenticating authorities.

Moving principals across security boundaries without service interruption

Described is a technology in a distributed configuration network management environment, in which action-style documents are used as guides in processing structured documents to perform management tasks. For example, the action-style documents may be used by a standard stylesheet processor to validate a constitutional document, and process input lines of that constitutional document into output lines of a document. When executed, the output lines perform a management task. In this manner, for example, policy statements of an administrator are transformed into a single type of self-contained document that is consistently interpreted, and thus consistently executed, regardless of its source or when it was authored.

Distributed configuration management using loosely-coupled action-style documents

An ad-hoc discovery protocol improves reliability, security and scalability of multicast and server-based discovery. In switching from multicast to server-based discovery, the discovery client is made responsible for multicast suppression, and not discoverable devices with services. Messages include message identifier and time-to-live parameters to detect recast queries and avoid duplicating replies. A device's announcement message includes endpoint identifier, configuration number and stateless boot time parameters to detect changed device configuration and rebooted state for refreshing cached device and service descriptions. Paging parameters allow a discovery client to control the number of discovery responses returned at a time from a discovery server.

Ad-hoc service discovery protocol

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Jeffrey Bruce Parham