Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Maurice Balick

Arthur A Van Hoff

Alan Michael Snyder

Mark W Hapner

David M Brownell

Rafael Bracho

Rod J McChesney

Andrew Everett Davidson

Raphael Bracho

Roderick J McChesney

Roderick J Mc Chesney

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 networked computer system contains a number of host computers with servers that provide various functionality to distributed clients on the network. Clients are able to access runtime information about servers on remote host computers, even where the clients have only object references to the servers through the presence of an embedded first class object within each server process. The first class object can be used to determine the process identification of the server process, counts of active objects and implementations in the server process, and to control tracing and logging functions provided by application programming interfaces utilized by the server.

System and method to control and administer distributed object servers

An improved technique for serializing access to multithreading unsafe resources is described. A baton manager is used to manage the serializing of accesses to a multithreading unsafe resource. For a thread to access the multithreading unsafe resource, the thread must first obtain a baton from the baton manager. Then, once the thread has finished accessing the multithreading unsafe resource, the thread releases the baton to the baton manager. Hence, by using the baton manager to manage the baton, accesses to multithreading unsafe resources are serialized while program crashes or deadlocks are minimized. The multithreading unsafe resource will typically have a plurality of baton objects associated therewith. The baton objects are objects of object-oriented programming. The baton manager will permit at most one of the baton objects for a given multithreading unsafe resource to own the baton at a time. The threads associated with the baton objects waiting to own the baton must wait until they receive the baton before they can access the multithreading unsafe resource.

Method and apparatus for serializing access to multithreading unsafe

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Fairhaven, MD, United States of America

Maurice Balick