Oracle International Corporation

Mohammad Shoaib Lari

Srinath Krishnaswamy

Ravikanth Kasamsetty

Rajendra Pingte

Douglas James McMahon

Debashish Chatterjee

Lakshminarayanan &ldquo;Luxi&rdquo; Chidambaran

Multiple groups of read-only files, for use by various components of an application program in a computer, are packaged as follows. Several executable files are prepared, each executable file corresponding to a group of read-only files used by one or more components. Each executable file includes an array that has sufficient space to accommodate the group of read-only files to be packaged therein. Each array in each executable file is overwritten with data from a corresponding group of read-only files. The presence or absence of each executable file for a group of read-only files is indicated by an index that is developed during initialization of components. Retrieval of data is from the executable files, if the index indicates, on first accessing each read-only file, that the corresponding executable file is present. If the executable file is indicated by the index as being absent, then the read-only file is directly accessed.

Packaging multiple groups of read-only files of an application's components into multiple shared libraries

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates making an inter-process procedure call through a shared memory that is shared between a client process and a server process, wherein the client makes the inter-process procedure call as if the client is making a local procedure call, but the procedure call actually executes on the server. The system operates by an Application Programming Interface (API) to allow the client to make an inter-process procedure call. The system then allocates a section of the shared memory for the data structure parameters of the inter-process procedure call.

Method and apparatus for making inter-process procedure calls through shared memory

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates making an inter-process procedure call through a shared memory that is shared between a client process and a server process, wherein the client makes the inter-process procedure call as if the client is making a local procedure call, but the procedure call actually executes on the server. The system operates by providing an Application Programming Interface (API) to allow the client to make an inter-process procedure call. The system then allocates a section of the shared memory for the data structure parameters of the inter-process procedure call.

Files of software to be installed in a computer are packaged as follows. A source file is prepared to contain at least a declaration of an array of sufficient space to accommodate the files to be packaged. The source file is compiled into an executable file. Thereafter, the array in the executable file is overwritten with data from each file being packaged. Depending on the embodiment, the address of where each file begins in the executable file and each file's name may be stored in the same executable file or in a different file. The stored file names are used to identify an address of a file from its name, when the named file is first accessed. In several embodiments, the operating system loads the executable file as a library that is automatically shared by multiple instances of the application (or by multiple applications), to efficiently use physical memory.

Product packaging and installation mechanism

A method for providing memory management for objects is described. Specifically, techniques are described for providing common memory management code to objects that are instances of different classes and for releasing a memory management subtree that starts with a particular object in the memory management tree. A memory management template provides common pre-processor memory management code. A specialized version of the memory management template is used to create a specialized template subclass. When a memory management operator of an object that is an instance of the specialized template subclass is invoked the common memory management code in the specialized template is executed. Memory is associated with each object in a hierarchical tree. Data for the memory is maintained that reflects the hierarchical tree relationship between the objects. A subtree and the associated memory can be released without an application program tracking the relationships.

Providing common memory management code to objects that are instances of different classes

Simplified deallocation of memory for programming objects

A method and apparatus allows a client or other device separate from a server to retrieve from the server more data than is requested by an application program on the client. The additional data is maintained by the client or other device and provided to the application program in response to a subsequent request, reducing the number of times data is requested from the server, and also the processing and overhead required by the server to supply the data. If the server releases memory pointing to the data on the server at the time or after all data specified by the application program has been retrieved, because the data is potentially retrieved from the server in amounts larger than requested by the application program, the server may release memory pointing to the data on the server sooner than it would by processing requests for the data from the application program alone.

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Mohammad Shoaib Lari