Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Jeffrey D Nisewanger

Graham Hamilton

Peter B Kessler

Steven Robert Kleiman

Sami Shaio

Jacob Y Levy

Sanjay R Radia

Swee Boon Lim

William Frederick Foote

Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart

Alan Bishop

A method for enabling an application program to communicate with a network server, includes the steps of downloading a document from a document server to the application program, downloading code from a code server associated with the document server to the application program, the code including a network protocol handler for the network server, and using the network protocol handler to communicate with the network server.

Method and apparatus for enabling application programs to communicate with network clients and servers

Techniques for analyzing object-oriented computer programs are provided. A snapshot of the objects that are active at a specific point in time during execution may be stored. An analysis tool may be utilized to generate hypertext documents that allow a user to analyze the active objects. Additionally, a user may compare two different snapshots of active objects at two different run-times so that, for example, new instances of a class may be easily identified.

Object heap analysis techniques for discovering memory leaks and other

Method and apparatus for enabling application programs to communicate

A method for handling method calls in a client/server computer system includes the step of receiving at a server computer a method call generated by a client computer. The server computer then attempts to execute the method call and subsequently generates an exception. The exception is passed to the client computer. The client computer matches the exception to exceptions in an exception list stored in the client computer to obtain an exception object identifier. The exception object identifier is used to load exception code into the client computer. The exception code is then processed. Thus, the exception code need not be loaded at the time of generating the method call. Instead, it is only loaded when it is required at run time.

Method and apparatus for dynamically loading method call exception code

A client/server computer apparatus includes a large number of client computers connected to a transmission channel. The client computers generate method calls that are applied to the transmission channel. Each method call may be encoded with a different communication protocol. A server computer processes each method call from the transmission channel by initially locating within each method call a method descriptor specified in a protocol-dependent format. The method descriptor is then compared to a list of protocol-dependent values stored in the memory of the server computer. An index value is assigned upon matching the method descriptor to a selected protocol-dependent value in the list of protocol-dependent values. The index value is passed to a protocol-independent portion of the server computer. The protocol-independent portion of the server computer executes the method corresponding to the index value to generate a reply. The reply is then transported over the transmission channel to the client computer.

Method and apparatus for generically handling diverse protocol method

The invention provides solutions to the problems which are encountered by object oriented systems designers when attempting to implement schemes for object invocation and for argument passing in distributed systems wherein the arguments may be objects, and wherein the system supports a multiplicity of ORB-specific data formats, in ways which do not lock the object oriented base system into methods which may be difficult to change at a later time. Moreover, the invention disclosed describes a 'Marshal Buffer mechanism' which contains methods for marshaling data for a specific ORB; a 'Multi-ORB Marshaling system' which permits a Client Application and related stub to invoke an operation on a target object without any knowledge or concern about which ORB this target object uses or what data format the ORB requires for the arguments of the operation invoked; and a 'Computer system for multi-ORB communication' comprising an ORB independent layer which contains Client Applications and stubs; an ORB dependent-OS independent layer which contains ORB dependent code/Subcontract code mechanisms as well as ORB specific Marshal Buffers for a multiplicity of ORBs; and an Operating System (OS) layer.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Jeffrey D Nisewanger