Method and system for managing subscriptions using a publisher tree

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for managing subscriptions in a software system. The method includes sending a request to a child notification publisher to send a notification message to at least one subscriber on the child, notification publisher's subscriber list; sending the notification message to the subscribers on the child notification publisher's subscriber list; and sending a request to a parent notification publisher to send the notification message to the at least one subscriber on the parent notification publisher's subscriber list. The method and system in accordance with the present invention utilizes a publisher tree for managing subscriptions. This tree allows event subscribers to request subscriptions at a granular level without requiring the event subscribers who do not need a granular subscription to have multiple subscriptions to receive whole categories of messages from event sources. Further, this tree does not require the event sources to know anything about the event subscribers or what messages they are interested in receiving. Event sources only need to know the most granular level of subscriptions that the system supports, i.e., the leaf nodes of the tree. The structure of the publisher tree may thus be dynamically altered without the need to rewrite the programs at the event sources and subscribers. If the leaf nodes change, then the event sources will require minimal modifications, and the event subscribers will require updating. These changes may be implemented at run-time. The present invention also requires less event processing time and memory than conventional methods.