Borland Software Corporation

Jonathan K Weedon

Vishwanath Keshavamurthy Kasaravalli

Vijaykumar Natarajan

Disclosed are methods and threads for responding to a request to perform an operation on a server object as may be provided in software form within an object request broker (ORB) server library or an ORB server. The specified object is identified by a marshaled object key in a conventional manner. The method improves upon prior art techniques by directly locating the object using the marshaled object key free of any unmarshaling step. The specified operation can then be invoked on the located object. The method applies to both in-process and out-of-process requests. In a preferred implementation, the marshaled object key is utilized as a hash key to directly access a pointer to the object.

Method for efficient location of corba objects based on an unmarshaled object key in a request

A system and methodology for cross language type system compatibility is described. In one embodiment, for example, a system for translation of data types between a first application in a first language and a second application in a second language is described that comprises: a formal mapping between data types of the first language and data types of the second language; translators for translating data types between the first language and the second language based on the formal mapping; a translation mapping to the translators based on actual data types of the first application and formal data types of the second application; and a module for selecting an appropriate translator for translating between a particular data type in the first language and a data type in the second language based on the translation mapping in response to invocation of a method of the first application with the particular data type.

System and methodology for cross language type system compatibility

A transaction processing system providing improved methodology for invoking two-phase commit protocol (2PC) is described. More particularly, a transaction is handled without use of 2PC until the system determines that the transaction does, in fact, involve changes to more than one database. The methodology improves overall system performance by looking at each transaction to determine whether the transaction actually requires use of 2PC before incurring the overhead associated with use of the two-phase commit protocol. Because only a small percentage of real world transactions result in updates to more than one database, the methodology improves the overall performance of transaction processing systems considerably.

Transaction processing system providing improved methodology for two-phase commit decision

Methods for permitting concurrent access to an object in a data store of the type having an exclusive access cache are disclosed. The method uses first-in-last-out conditions to control which concurrent transaction, if there is more than one transaction pending for a given object, can provide updated data to the exclusive access cache. Only the first transaction can ever obtain data from the exclusive access cache, but the existence of current transactions when that first one completes precludes the first from updating the exclusive access cache. Rather, the last transaction to commit can update the cache, or leave it empty as the case may be.

Concurrent access scheme for exclusive mode cache

Methods for minimizing conflicts in an optimistic concurrency database access scheme are described. The method provides users or software processes with cache copies of database records and tracks which data items in the cache copy were modified and whether they were read, or read before ever being modified. A decision is then made using this information as to whether the current transaction can be committed to the database. The inventive scheme engrafts intelligence to the commitment decision process and accommodates many transactions which prior art schemes consider as conflicting. Consequently, the inventive method increases throughput in such systems.

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Nevada City, CA, United States of America

Jonathan K Weedon