Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Mohsen M Al-Ghosein

Patrick James Helland

Rodney Thomas Limprecht

Wilfred G Russell

Jan Stephen Gray

Gagan Chopra

Alexander Sasha Stojanovic

Seth B Pollack

Shankar Pal

David Richard Reed

Donald James McCrady

Stephen T Swartz

Richard Dievendorff

Thulusalamatom Krishnamurthi Anand

Gunnar Mein

Donald W Dumitru

Gerald L Hinson

Paul M Oeuvray

Govinda Dhondu

Greg Hope

Amit Mital

William D Devlin

Matthew C McCline

Queued component interface passing provides a way for a queued component to convey results of processing a client program's method invocations made asynchronously via a queue. A queued component recorder for a 'processing' queued component operates to marshal-by-value a method invocation parameter that is reference to another queued component recorder for another 'results' queued component into a data stream of recorded method invocations, which is then submitted as a message to a queue associated with the processing queued component. On receipt of the message from the queue, a queued component player for the processing queued component unmarshals the reference to the other queued component recorder and passes this reference to the processing queued component. The processing queued component uses the passed reference to invoke methods of the results queued component through its message queue, which conveys the processing queued component's results.

Queued component interface passing for results outflow from queued method invocations

An object-based event communications system supplies an event distribution object having an outgoing-from-publisher event interface and associated with unique identifiers defined for a publisher that is programmed to fire events by calling a method on the event distribution object's outgoing-from-publisher event interface. The event communications system stores subscriptions of subscriber objects to methods of the outgoing-from-publisher event interface. On receiving a call from a publisher to its outgoing-from-publisher interface methods, the event distribution object multi-casts calls to counterpart methods of subscriber objects that have stored subscriptions to the respective outgoing-from-publisher interface methods.

Object connectivity through loosely coupled publish and subscribe events

A run-time executive of an object management system for managing execution of software components in an object execution environment uses a component context object to store intrinsic context properties related to an associated component. The run-time executive maintains an implicit association of the component context object with the application component. For example, the context properties can include a client id, an activity id, and a transaction reference. The component context object also provides an interface accessible to the associated component, with member functions for use in transaction processing, in creating additional other application components inheriting component's context properties, and in access control based on abstract user classes (roles).

Software component execution management using context objects for tracking externally-defined intrinsic properties of executing software components within an execution environment

An application layer protocol is provided on top of HTTP 1.0/1.1 to allow for COM Automation objects to be invoked over the Internet through IIS/ISAPI servers. The format essentially encodes the automation object's name, method to invoke, and any [in], [out], [in, out] parameters that the method signature requires, packages them up into a custom MIME type and marshals it to the ISAPI dynamic link library (DLL) on the IIS/HTTP server. There, the ISAPI DLL contains the logic to unpack the SOAP request, parses it, creates the Automation object, invokes the method with the marshaled parameters, and then returns any [out] parameters to the caller/client using the SOAP protocol. It is a stateless protocol, meaning that object lifetimes only extend to one method, and are recreated between multiple calls to the object.

Simple object access protocol

A component-based framework includes system services and component integration interfaces that provide a run-time environment for component-based server application in which server application components have control over the duration of their state independent of client action. The framework provides functions that a server application component calls to indicate its work for a client is complete, and its state is to be destroyed. On the component's return from the client's method call, the framework destroys the component's state thus releasing any server computer resources held by the component. This allows the server application components to be programmed so as to minimize the duration that their state remains in memory consuming server computer resources, and which enhances scalability of the server application.

Server application components with control over state duration

An application layer protocol is provided on top of HTTP 1.0/1.1 to allow for COM Automation objects to be invoked over the Internet through IIS/ISAPI servers. The format essentially encodes the automation object's name, method to invoke, and any &lsqb;in&rsqb;, &lsqb;out&rsqb;, &lsqb;in, out&rsqb; parameters that the method signature requires, packages them up into a custom MIME type and marshals it to the ISAPI dynamic link library (DLL) on the IIS/HTTP server. There, the ISAPI DLL contains the logic to unpack the SOAP request, parses it, creates the Automation object, invokes the method with the marshaled parameters, and then returns any &lsqb;out&rsqb; parameters to the caller/client using the SOAP protocol. It is a stateless protocol, meaning that object lifetimes only extend to one method, and are recreated between multiple calls to the object.

A multi-tier server application architecture provides a simplified programming model of multiple user server applications that enhances programmer productivity. The multi-tier architecture comprises a client tier for client application code that initiates processing by the server application in response to user input, a middle tier of object-oriented server application code, and a database tier of shared access data and management code. A run-time environment for the object-oriented server application code limits access to instantiated objects of the middle tier server application code to a single one of the users. Objects in the middle tier that are instantiated to initiate processing for a particular user and grouped into a collection. The run-time environment manages the flow of execution into the collection such that the collection has only a single logical thread of execution and access by the client application code is exclusive to the particular user.

Multi-user server application architecture with single-user object tier

A component-based framework includes system services and component integration interfaces that provide a run-time environment which automatically processes work of component-based server applications in transactions according to transactional rules or behaviors declaratively specified to apply to the respective components. A transaction attribute is declaratively specified for a server application component that represents whether the component requires execution in a transaction. When a client requests creation of a server application component without having first initiated a transaction and the component's transaction attribute indicates a transaction is required, the framework automatically initiates a transaction in which to run the server application component. The framework also completes the automatically initiated transaction upon receiving an indication from the server application component that its transactional work is complete.

Transaction processing of distributed objects with declarative transactional attributes

A run-time environment implemented as system services and component integration interfaces provides scalable and robust component-based server applications by deactivating server application components between uses by a client program on separate items of work while allowing the client program to retain references to server application components when deactivated. When a server application component is deactivated, a data state of the component and any resources held by the component are released. The run-time environment activates a component on receiving a call by the client to the component while the component is deactivated, whereupon the component is instantiated with an initial data state. The client can interact with the component as if one instance of the component were in continuous existence from the time the client requests creation of the component until the client finally releases the component reference, whereas in actuality the client accesses a sequence or stream of instances using the component reference through multiple iterations of the activation and deactivation cycle.

Just-in-time activation and as-soon-as-possible deactivation or server application components

Intelligent Trust Management provides a centralized security facility that gives system components a flexible mechanism for implementing security policies. System components such as applications create a request describing an action that needs to be checked against an appropriate security policy. The request is given to a trust system that determines which policy object applies to the request, and may pass request arguments to the policy. The policy objects include executable code that uses any arguments along with dynamically obtained variable information to make a decision. The decision is returned to the system component, which then operates accordingly. Policy objects may maintain state and interface with the user independent of the system component in order to obtain information to make their decisions. Policy objects may call other policy objects and/or mathematically combine the results of other policy objects to make a decision.

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Mohsen M Al-Ghosein