Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Oracle America, Inc.

Mark W Hapner

Alan Michael Snyder

Arthur A Van Hoff

Aravindan Ranganathan

Vladimir Matena

Gary Franklin Ellison

Sai Vs Allavarpu

Peter Yared

Hal L Stern

John Beatty

Maurice Balick

Larry Abrahams

Sheldon J Finkelstein

David M Brownell

Thulasiraman Jeyaraman

Rafael Bracho

Jefferson A Dinkins

Roderic G Cattell

Bruce E Martin

Rod J McChesney

Kevin Grant Osborn

Rahul Sharma

Ken M Cavanaugh

William A Shannon

Linda Gail DeMichiel

Raphael Bracho

Kenneth David Saks

Hans Hrasna

Roderick J Mc Chesney

Kathleen A Stout

Qingqing Ouyang

Ron Kleinman

A distributed network identity is provided. An identity provider stores a portion of a user's personal information. A service provider accesses user information from one or more identity providers. System entities such as identity providers and service providers can be linked to enable information sharing and aggregation. User policies and privacy preferences are provided to control how information is shared. A single sign-on architecture is provided where an identity provider is used to facilitate cross-domain authentication and to enhance user convenience. Service delegation features are also provided.

Distributed network identity

Methods and apparatus for improving the overall performance of a system which processes transactions and provides connections in an enterprise environment are disclosed. According to one aspect of the present invention, a method for processing a transaction in an enterprise environment includes receiving a request to start the transaction, storing information which indicates that the request to start the transaction was received, and accessing a first resource manager associated with the transaction. Typically, a container receives the request to start a transaction from a component such as an enterprise bean. Once the first resource is accessed, the transaction is initiated as a local transaction on the first resource manager, and, eventually, the transaction is completed. In one embodiment, completing the transaction includes using a local transaction mechanism of the first resource manager to complete the local transaction.

Method and apparatus for increasing the efficiency of transactions and connection sharing in an enterprise environment

A method, apparatus, and system for providing a standard, generic contract between an application server and a message provider which allows the message provider to deliver messages to message endpoints (each of which is associated with a corresponding message application) residing in the application server is disclosed. By generic, it is meant that the contract is independent of the specific messaging style, messaging semantics and messaging infrastructure used to deliver messages. In this way, the contract also serves as the standard message provider pluggability contract that allows any message provider to be plugged into any application server via an associated resource adapter.

Architecture for plugging messaging systems into an application server

Methods and apparatus for implementing deployment descriptors which are used to deploy modules in an enterprise environment are disclosed. According to one aspect of the present invention, a method for deploying an application using a deployment tool for use on a platform server includes creating the application, creating an application deployment descriptor for the application, packaging the application in an archive, and deploying the application packaged in the archive. Creating the application includes obtaining an application component which has an associated application component deployment descriptor that has information relating to the deployment of the application component. The application deployment descriptor for the application includes information arranged to identify the application component, and packaging the application in an archive includes packaging the application component, the application component deployment descriptor, and the application deployment descriptor. The application packaged in the archive is deployed using the application component deployment descriptor.

Method and apparatus for implementing deployment descriptors in an enterprise environment

Methods and apparatus for implementing state machines as enterprise beans with reliable or transactional timers on an enterprise platform are disclosed. According to one aspect of the present invention, a state machine is arranged to be used within a computing system that supports an enterprise platform. The state machine includes an entity object, a home interface associated with the entity object, and a remote interface associated with the entity object. The home interface is arranged to create, find, and remove entity objects, while the remote interface is arranged to drive the state machine. The entity object is arranged to be deployed in a bean container, which includes a timer. In addition to including a timer, the bean container is arranged to invoke the entity object using the remote. In one embodiment, the timer is transactional.

Method and apparatus for implementing timers for enterprise javabean components

A method and apparatus for managing relationships among objects in a distributed object environment includes a method and apparatus for determining whether two or more object references refer to identical objects; a method and apparatus for providing a unique identifier for an object; a method and apparatus for checking role types for the formation of relationships; and a method and apparatus for caching role and object locations in roles in a relationship. In the method and apparatus for determining whether two or more object references refer to the same object, a unique object identifier is compared to determine if the objects referred to by the object references are identical. The unique identifier is provided by concatenating information identifying the machine address of the process that created the object in addition to the process ID, the time of creation and a process counter. In the method and apparatus for checking role types, information including the number of roles and is passed to a relationship factory which determines whether the number, types and cardinality of the roles passed to the factory are consistent with the relationship object to be created. The method and apparatus also includes caching of object references and roles for objects related to a given object in that object's role. The methods and apparatus of the invention thus provide valuable tools for managing relationship among objects in a distributed object environment efficiently.

Method and apparatus for determining equality of objects in a distributed object environment

A method and apparatus for installing distributed objects on a distributed object system is described. In one aspect the distributed objects include wrapper classes that inherit object attributes through an inheritance relationship with a developer-written servant class of objects, the developer-written servant classes inheriting attributes through an optional inheritance relationship with an interface class of objects. In a preferred embodiment, the wrapper classes provide an interface mechanism between the methods of the servant class of objects and the object request broker mechanism of the distributed object system. Also included is an apparatus for creating and installing the distributed object in the memory of a computer on a distributed object system. The invention further includes a mechanism for distinguishing deployed distributed objects from development distributed objects.

Method and apparatus for generation and installation of distributed objects on a distributed object system

A variety of methods and apparatus for managing deactivation and deletion of objects and server processes are taught. According to some embodiments of the present invention, a thread of execution termed the reaper thread systematically cycles through a computer process deactivating and/or deleting objects based upon a variety of criteria. One suitable criterion for object deactivation is based upon the amount of time lapsed since a client has requested services of the object. According to the timeout criterion, the reaper thread determines the period of time since the last client requested services from the object, compares this to a timeout value which may be defined by any suitable entity, and proceeds with deactivation and/or deletion accordingly. Object deletion may have a separate criterion or be specifically requested by a client. A deletion flag may be set to indicate that object deletion is requested. When an object has deactivated, the reaper thread further determines if the deletion flag for this object is set, and, if so, further proceeds to perform an object deletion operation. In some embodiments, the reaper thread is further responsible to shutdown the server process under which the reaper thread is executing. As is well known to those skilled in the art of object oriented programming, a thread of execution is essentially a sequential flow of the point of execution through a computer process. One suitable criterion for server process shutdown would be related to the server process activity.

Methods and apparatus for managing objects and processes in a distributed object operating environment

Methods and apparatus for managing objects and processes in a

A variety of methods and apparatus for managing a database in a object oriented environment are disclosed. According to the present invention, a database is provided which includes a database cache and a persistent database portion. Clients of the database are able to write quickly and asynchronously to the database cache, which may be located in transient memory such as random access memory. In order to maintain consistency between the state of the client and the state in the database, the data in the database cache must be written to the persistent database portion. In preferred embodiments a time commit thread executing in a computer process will, in single operations performed at predetermined intervals and when predetermined conditions are met, commit the data in the database cache into the persistent database portion. Thus through the strategies of the present invention, a single client database can have multiple clients. Clients of the database may be a variety of computer entities which require a mechanism for maintaining persistent state. In particular, objects are contemplated. In an apparatus embodiment of the present invention, a computer system having a central processing unit, a transient memory, a persistent memory, and a database is disclosed.

Methods and apparatus for managing a database in a distributed operating

A number of methods and apparatus are disclosed for providing transparent persistence in a distributed object operating environment are disclosed. In general, the present invention teaches replacing the value in the object's data pointer (addressing information which points to the objects limited persistent memory) with a pointer value which points out to another persistent storage device. In preferred embodiments, a persistent storage manager (external and transparent to the distributed object) maintains the object data. In a specific embodiment, a distributed object framework is provided which has the mechanism for providing the transparent persistent strategy of the present invention. An object developer develops object implementations which the distributed object generates distributed objects with, in the process automatically providing transparent persistence.

Methods and apparatus for providing transparent persistence in a

Method and apparatus for managing relationships among objects in a

Methods and apparatus for managing a database in a distributed object

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Mark W Hapner