Application server system and method

• US 20060136914A1
• Filed: 11/30/2004
• Published: 06/22/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Metreos Corp. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Chaney, Adam, deCocq, James L., Marascio, Louis R.
• Granted Patent: US 7,593,980 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3664 Environments for testing or debugging software
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1053 IP private branch exchange [PBX] functionality entities or arrangements circuit switched PBXs H04M3/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1063 Application servers providing network services systems providing special services to telephonic subscribers H04M3/42
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0012 Details of application programming interfaces [API] for telephone networks; Arrangements which combine a telephonic communication equipment and a computer, i.e. computer telephony integration [CPI] arrangements

Abstract

An application server system is provided having a core engine connecting one or more protocol providers to one or more applications. In a preferred embodiment, the one or more applications run on a respective one or more virtual machines having their own execution threads. A thread pool may be used to spawn instances of applications or scripts. Preferably, the core engine, the protocol providers, and each of the one or more virtual machines run in separate AppDomains. In another embodiment, a visual designer is provided preferably having XML conversion capability and interactive debug capability.

Claims

1. A telephony application server system comprising:

one or more application servers, each application server comprising;

a provider framework module for interfacing with one or more telecommunications services modules;

a core engine module interfacing with the provider framework module and executing in a first execution thread;

one or more instances of a virtual machine interfacing with the core engine module; and

one or more script pools each associated with a respective one of the one or more instances of the virtual machine, the script pools each containing an application comprising one or more scripts, the core engine module operative to receive a first triggering event from the one or more telecommunications service modules, the core engine module operative to activate a selected first instance of the one or more instances of the virtual machine to run a first instance of a designated application to respond to the first triggering event, the first instance executing in a second execution thread separate from the first execution thread.

2. The telephony application server system of claim 1 in which the core engine module is operative to receive a second triggering event from the one or more telecommunications service modules, the core engine module operative to activate a selected second instance of the one or more instances of the virtual machine to run a second instance of a designated second application to respond to the second triggering event, the second instance executing in a third execution thread separate from the first and second execution threads.

3. The telephony application server system of claim 1 in which the core engine module is operative to receive unsolicited events from the one or more telecommunications service modules, the unsolicited events having an associated event signature, the event signature uniquely identifying the first instance of the designated application, the core engine module operative to pass the unsolicited event to the first instance of the designated application.

4. The telephony application server system of claim 1 in which the one or more application servers are running on one or more separate server machines, at least one of the one or more telecommunications service modules being interconnected to a private-branch-exchange running on a separate machine from the one or more server machines.

5. The telephony application server system of claim 1 further including a debugging module associated with the core module, the debugging module operative to relay operational data from the first instance of the selected application to a debugging console, the operational data including data regarding the state of the first instance of the designated application and data regarding variables in the first instance of the designated application, the debugging module operative to adjust a visual canvas display of the first instance of the selected application while the first instance of the selected application is running.