Cabletron Systems, Inc.

Aprisma Management Technologies, Inc.

Todd A Crowley

Jason Jeffords

Thomas Hazel

Donald Sexton

Roger H Dev

Method and apparatus for coordinating access to a shared object amongst a plurality of processes in a distributed system. One process is identified as a lock owner process controlling a lock associated with the shared object. When a process needs to access the shared object, it requests control of the lock from the lock owner process. When no other process controls the lock, the lock owner process grants control to the requesting process. When another process controls the lock, the lock owner process places the requesting process in a queue and waits for the lock to become available. All accesses to the shared object are processed through the lock owner processes thus assuring coordination and synchronization among the processes.

Method and apparatus for coordination of a shared object in a distributed system

Method and apparatus for coordination of a shared object in a

A system and method for controlling access to a shared object among a plurality of interconnected processes. A lock token is associated with a shared object. In order for a process to access or modify the associated object, it must possess the lock token. Whenever a process establishes control of the lock token, it transmits a message to each other process indicating that the process controls the lock token. In some instances, in order for a process to establish control of the lock token, the process must receive approval from each other process. Further, when two or more processes request the lock token at the same time, neither process will gain control and each process will then wait for a random time period before again seeking control of the token.

Establishing control of lock token for shared objects upon approval

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Windham, NH, United States of America

Todd A Crowley