Garbage Collection Of Persistent Objects With Dynamic Multikeys

• US 20070276888A1
• Filed: 05/15/2006
• Published: 11/29/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 05/15/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avaya Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Avaya Incorporated
• Inventors: Klemm, Reinhard
• Granted Patent: US 10,289,728 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0253 Garbage collection, i.e. reclamation of unreferenced memory
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/289 Object oriented databases

Abstract

A mechanism is disclosed that enables garbage collection of object instances that have persistent data and a mutable key. A mutable key capability is advantageous in a variety of applications, such as monitoring a set of users and their login status on a plurality of media servers (e.g., an email server, an instant messaging server, a voice mail server, a video server, an audio-conferencing server, etc.). Implementations based on the Enterprise JavaBean specification are disclosed for three illustrative embodiments of the present invention. The illustrative embodiments of the present invention can also be implemented in accordance with object persistence mechanisms other than Enterprise JavaBeans.

Claims

1. A process comprising destroying a first object instance that has one or more persistent fields and a method for accessing a mutable key.

2. The process of claim 1 further comprising destroying a persistent second object instance that has a first immutable key associated with said mutable key.

3. The process of claim 2 wherein said first immutable key is also associated with at least one of said persistent fields of said first object instance.

4. The process of claim 2 further comprising destroying a persistent third object instance that has a second immutable key that is used by said persistent second object instance as a foreign key.

5. The process of claim 2 wherein said persistent second object instance belongs to an object class that implements an Enterprise JavaBean interface.

6. A process comprising destroying a persistent first object instance in response to an invocation of a method of a second object instance;

wherein said method is for accessing a mutable key; and

wherein said second object instance has one or more persistent fields; and

wherein said persistent first object instance has a first immutable key that is associated with said mutable key.

7. The process of claim 6 further comprising destroying said second object instance.

8. The process of claim 7 further comprising destroying a persistent third object instance that has a second immutable key that is used by said persistent first object instance as a foreign key.

9. The process of claim 6 wherein said mutable key is for storing one value at a time, and wherein said method is for deleting the value of said mutable key, and wherein said second object instance has one or more other mutable keys.

10. The process of claim 9 further comprising destroying said second object instance when and only when none of said other mutable keys have values.

11. The process of claim 10 further comprising, when and only when none of said other mutable keys have values, destroying a persistent third object instance that has a field that corresponds to one of said persistent fields of said second object instance.

12. The process of claim 6 wherein said mutable key is capable of having a plurality of different values at the same time, and wherein said method is for deleting a value of said mutable key.

13. The process of claim 12 further comprising destroying said second object instance when and only when said value of said mutable key is the only value of said mutable key.

14. The process of claim 13 further comprising, when and only when said value of said mutable key is the only value of said mutable key, destroying a persistent third object instance that has a field that corresponds to one of said persistent fields of said second object instance.

15. The process of claim 6 wherein said method is for changing a value of said mutable key.

16. A process comprising destroying a persistent first object instance in response to an invocation of a method of a second object instance;

wherein said method is for accessing a mutable key; and

wherein said second object instance has one or more persistent fields; and

wherein said persistent first object instance has a field that corresponds to one of said persistent fields of said second object instance.

17. The process of claim 16 further comprising destroying said second object instance.

18. The process of claim 16 wherein said method is for deleting the value of said mutable key.

19. The process of claim 16 wherein said method is for changing the value of said mutable key.

20. The process of claim 16 wherein said persistent first object instance belongs to an object class that implements an Enterprise JavaBean interface.