Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Shaun David Cox

Serkan M Kutan

Vadim Eydelman

Shaun Douglas Pierce

Bimal Kumar Mehta

Setty Venkateshaiah

Timothy J Rang

Vijay Kishen Hampapur Parthasarathy

Gur Kimchi

Paul J Leach

Abolade Gbadegesin

Mark H Lucovsky

David A Nichols

Christopher Wellington Brumme

Richard Bruce Ward

Sanjay N Kaniyar

Dhigha D Sekaran

Jinsong Yu

Srikanth Shoroff

Nk Srinivas

Pavel Curtis

Bhupinder Singh Sethi

Deepak Rao

Nirav A Kamdar

Orit Levin

Gregory Michael Neverov

Erdinc Basci

Fehim Soner Terek

Yaron Weinsberg

John Richardson

Communicating between an application and a hardware device. A method includes an application writing data to host physical memory using an application view of the memory. The method further includes mapping the data in the physical memory to a hardware driver view, usable by a hardware driver, without needing to copy the data to a different physical storage location. The method further includes mapping the data to a hardware accessible view accessible by a hardware device without needing to copy the data to a different physical storage location.

DMA channels

A method and system for increasing the computational and network efficiency of presence servers having collections of publications is provided. The presence system uses several techniques that enable a presence server to provide rich presence information without requiring expensive processing. First, the presence system accepts batches of publication updates in a single presence update request. Similarly, the presence system accepts batches of subscription requests. Next, the presence system supports new expiration types for publication update requests that eliminate the need for a publishing user to continually refresh presence information that has not changed. Finally, the presence system accepts access lists that contain membership groups rather than an individual list of users that are to have access to a particular presence collection.

Managing rich presence collections in a single request

Architecture for a scalable, pluggable multi-party, and distributed multimedia conferencing. A centralized policy and control conferencing component allows the seamless plug-in of different distributed media components (e.g., data, audio/video, messaging) to accommodate client participation in a conference session. The centralized conference control component includes the following: a conference notification service for accepting subscriptions to the conference state and notifying subscribers about changes to that state; a conference policy and roster control service for storing and manipulating conference policy and rosters; a security service for user authorization/authentication based on user identity information; a scheduling service for conference scheduling; an allocation service for allocating the most available media component(s) for a conference session; and, an MCU management service for conference policy and roster management of the distributed media components.

Distributable, scalable, pluggable conferencing architecture

A platform for manipulating data associated with defining, deploying, and administering distributed server systems utilizes a structured data model with a flexible replication mechanism, a set of schemas, and an object model to manipulate system topology, configuration (settings), and policies. A scoping mechanism for characteristics of the settings, policies, and resolution is provided in addition to the data model along with an authorization mechanism for single and multi-tenant environments.

Definition configuration and administration of distributed server systems through structured data model

A method and system for managing presence information based on collections of publications is provided. The presence system creates collections of publications for a publisher. A publication includes a type and value. A publisher may define one collection of publications that is to be made available to certain subscribers and another collection of publications that is to be made available to other subscribers. The presence system may allow a publisher to update individual publications within a collection. Moreover, the presence system may identify subscribers of a collection at the time of subscription.

Organizing presence information into collections of publications

Managing rich presence collections

A system, apparatus, method, and computer-readable media are provided for efficient database lookup operations. According to method, procedural checks for generating a response to a database query are converted into a set of database operations. The database operations are performed the first time a query of the database is received to generate a set of possible results for the query. The set of possible results for the query are then stored. A specific answer to the query is generated from the set of possible results. Future database queries are responded to by generating an answer to the query from the stored set of possible results.

Efficient presence information lookup operations

Efficient database lookup operations

A method and system for sending notifications from servers of a server pool to clients is provided. The notification system determines when an in-band notification is to be sent to clients. The notification system identifies a distinguished server for each client that is to send the in-band notification to that client. The notification system then sends an out-of-band notification to the distinguished server of each client indicating that an in-band notification is to be sent to the client. When the distinguished server receives the out-of-band notification, the distinguished server then sends an in-band notification to the client.

Sending inter-server notifications using an out-of-band communications protocol

Disclosed is a rollback-free method for performing multi-step procedures in the presence of possible failure. As the procedure proceeds from its initial state through transitions to its final state, its constituent transitions are monitored for failure. If a failure is detected, then the procedure is 'sidetracked' into a recovery coordination state. From the recovery coordination state, the procedure is logically taken back to its initial state and retried. In this manner, the procedure is shepherded, without rollbacks, through its transitions until it successfully reaches its final state. In a particular embodiment, a multi-step procedure is developed for moving a resource from one resource server to another The steps of the procedure are designed so that all throughout the procedure, both of the resource servers and a directory server are kept synchronized. This allows client requests to proceed without interruption even during the resource movement.

Method and system for rollback-free failure recovery of multi-step procedures

A client sends a request to an authentication server requesting access to a service at an application server. The authentication server returns a token containing an encrypted version of a session key that was encrypted using a secret shared between the authentication server and the application server. The client encrypts application data using a corresponding unencrypted version of the session key and text-encodes both the encrypted application data and the encrypted version of the session key. The text-encoded application and text-encoded encrypted version of the session key are both included in a message and sent to the application server. The application server decrypts the encrypted version of the session key using the shared secret so as to reveal the unencrypted version of the session key. The application server then decrypts the encrypted application data using the revealed unencrypted version of the session key.

Using atomic messaging to increase the security of transferring data across a network

Disclosed is a rollback-free method for performing multi-step procedures in the presence of possible failure. As the procedure proceeds from its initial state through transitions to its final state, its constituent transitions are monitored for failure. If a failure is detected, then the procedure is 'sidetracked' into a recovery coordination state. From the recovery coordination state, the procedure is logically taken back to its initial state and retried. In this manner, the procedure is shepherded, without rollbacks, through its transitions until it successfully reaches its final state. In a particular embodiment, a multi-step procedure is developed for moving a resource from one resource server to another. The steps of the procedure are designed so that all throughout the procedure, both of the resource servers and a directory server are kept synchronized. This allows client requests to proceed without interruption even during the resource movement.

A new communications connection timer management framework for handling network communications protocol timers is disclosed. The timer management framework separates transmission control blocks (TCBs) having scheduled actions from the set of all TCBs maintained by a server. The TCBs having scheduled actions are referenced by a time-space partitioned data structure having time-slots corresponding to a current protocol timer 'tick' value. The active TCBs are placed within particular ones of the time-space partitions based upon their expiration times. During each timer check sequence (e.g., once every 100 millisecond timer tick for TCP protocol timers), the timer management framework accesses a partition associated with a current timer value and checks the TCBs referenced within the current partition.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Shaun David Cox