Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Ying Xie

Madhusudhan Talluri

Skef F Iterum

Kenneth William Shirriff

Elaine Chien

Peter C Williams

The invention provides a system and method for determining the winner or winners of an on-line auction accepting proxy bids. Proxy bids are bids that do not have a bid price, but instead have ceiling price that indicates the highest price a bidder is willing to bid for goods. The system and method according to the invention are able to sort the bids from highest to lowest and determine a winner or winners depending on the amount of goods being offered for sale. The system then generates a winning bid price by determining the lowest bid required to win the auction. The winning bidder or bidders pay this winning bid price.

Efficient implementation of an auction proxy bid engine

A system and method are provided for ensuring delivery of a communication from one computer system or node to another. A first node includes an object handler, such as an ORB (Object Request Broker), that receives object references from higher-level services operating on the first node, wherein the referenced object resides on a second node. The first node's object handler generates a message to an object handler on the second node and attempts to send the message to the second node through a transport module. The message is assigned a unique identifier, such as a sequence number. If the first object handler receives an uncertain status concerning the message (e.g., other than a certain success or failure), it issues a query to the second node to determine if the message was received. If the query is received by the second object handler before the message itself is received, the message is considered lost or rescinded by the first node. The first node stores the identifier so that it will not be re-assigned to another message and the message is then re-sent with a different identifier. The second object handler notes the identifier and status of the rescinded message and will discard any message having that identifier that is received. The second node includes two or more data structures to track the status of communications sent from the first node. The first node, in addition to a collection of identifiers of lost messages, may also record the status of communications it attempts to send and may also note the identifiers of messages that could not be transmitted (e.g., because of communication link errors).

System and method for ensuring delivery of a single communication between nodes

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates communications between a cluster of nodes within a clustered computing system in a manner that tolerates failures of communication pathways between the nodes. The system operates by configuring a distinct logical pathway between each possible source node and each possible destination node in the cluster, so that each distinct logical pathway is routed across one of at least two disjoint physical pathways between each possible source node and each possible destination node. In doing so, the system configures a first logical pathway between a first node and a second node across a first physical pathway of at least two disjoint physical pathways between the first node and the second node. Upon detecting a failure of the first physical pathway, the system reroutes the first logical pathway across a second physical pathway from the at least two disjoint physical pathways between the first node and the second node. In one embodiment of the present invention, the system associates a distinct per-node logical address with each node in the cluster. For each source node, the system associates the per-node logical address of each possible destination node with a corresponding logical pathway to the destination node. In this way, a communication from a given source node to a per-node logical address of a given destination node is directed across the corresponding logical pathway to the given destination node.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Ying Xie