Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Lei Jin

Murali R Krishnan

David L Kaplan

Seth B Pollack

James E Allard

Mark T Anders

Shaoyu Zhou

Fei Cao

Sijian Zhang

Andrew David Sigal

Ehr-Chun Yeh

Systems, methods, and computer storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that maintain a targetable user inventory for digital advertising. In embodiments, a request is made for user data associated with a user identification. If the user data or user identification is not available, a list of alternative user identifications is ranked according to various criteria based on identification signals. A match is selected from the list of alternative user identifications and user data associated with the alternative user identification is communicated in response to the request.

Maintaining targetable user inventory for digital advertising

A server architecture includes a server program to receive a request from a client. In one aspect, an out-of-process application executing in a separate process from the server program is invoked to process the request and to generate a response to be returned to the client, and the server architecture includes a subsystem to detect when the out-of-process application fails and to recover the out-of-process application without disrupting operation of the server program. In another aspect, a method for detecting when an out-of-process application fails includes recording the request on a list as the request is passed to the application, examining the request as it is returned from the application, determining that the application has failed if the returned request contains erroneous data, and if the application has not failed then removing the request from the list.

Server architecture with detection and recovery of failed out-of-process application

A server architecture has a server program to receive client requests and multiple applications to process the requests. Each application comprises a collection of agents that can be invoked to process the requests and an application manager that manages the collection of agents. The agents within the associated collection are independent from, but dynamically accessible by, the application manager. Depending on the request, the application manager selects one or more agents to generate content to be returned to the client. An application manager director manages the application managers and facilitates delivery of the client requests from the server program to the suitable application. The application managers are independent from, but dynamically accessible by, the application manager director. For a given request, the director selects the appropriate application manager to handle the request. The application manager, in turn, selects the appropriate agent to process the request. The applications, including the agents and associated application managers, can be run either in-process or out-of-process with the server program. The server architecture has a detection and recovery subsystem that detects when an out-of-process application crashes and then recovers the application from that crash. The subsystem logs requests when they are passed to the out-of-process application, and remove the requests from the log when responses to the requests are returned from the application. If the out-of-process application crashes while one or more requests are outstanding, those requests remain listed on the log and thus readily identifiable. During recovery, the subsystem cleans up the outstanding requests until the log is cleared. Thereafter, the subsystem restarts the failed application to restore the service.

A server architecture has a server program to receive client requests and multiple applications to process the requests. Each application comprises a collection of agents that can be invoked to process the requests and an application manager that manages the collection of agents. The agents within the associated collection are independent from, but dynamically accessible by, the application manager. Depending on the request, the application manager selects one or more agents to generate content to be returned to the client. An application manager director manages the application managers and facilitates delivery of the client requests from the server program to the suitable application. The application managers are independent from, but dynamically accessible by, the application manager director. For a given request, the director selects the appropriate application manager to handle the request. The application manager, in turn, selects the appropriate agent to process the request. The director can be implemented as part of the server program. The applications, including the agents and associated application managers, can be run either in-process or out-of-process with the server program.

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Issaquah, WA, United States of America

Lei Jin