TIER SPLITTING SUPPORT FOR DISTRIBUTED EXECUTION ENVIRONMENTS

• US 20080196025A1
• Filed: 02/12/2007
• Published: 08/14/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/12/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Beckman, Brian C., Meijer, Henricus Johannes Maria, Zhu, Wei, Brumme, Christopher W., Shields, Mark B.
• Granted Patent: US 8,209,674 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/177
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/45 Exploiting coarse grain parallelism in compilation, i.e. parallelism between groups of instructions

Abstract

A spectrum of tier-splitting mechanisms facilitates distributed programming. A rich application model and associated tools enable programmers to write rich distributed applications that can run anywhere. A program can be developed simply as a single tier or tier agnostic application. Subsequently or concurrently, the program can be sliced into multiple tiers in different ways to reflect, for instance, capabilities and/or constraints of a server, client and/or network.

Claims

1. A computer programming system, comprising:

a component that acquires a tier independent computer application; and

a splitting component that splits the application into a plurality of tiers to facilitate distributed execution across the tiers and preservation of sequential semantics.

2. The system of claim 1, the splitting component utilizes one or more pre-split libraries to split the application.

3. The system of claim 2, the one or more libraries include one or more asynchronous calls and/or co-routines.

4. The system of claim 1, the splitting component is included within a compiler.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a compiler component that transforms virtual machine code into browser executable code.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising a context component that identifies execution context to the splitting component to facilitate optimal tier splitting.

7. The system of claim 6, the context component identifies runtime execution context to facilitate runtime adaptive splitting.

8. The system of claim 1, the splitting component injects one or more co-routines into the application to facilitate distributed computation across the tiers.

9. The system of claim 1, the splitting component injects asynchronous method calls with respect to computationally intense operations.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising a test component that enables testing and/or debugging of the split application in a simulated distributed environment.

11. The system of claim 1, a protocol is utilized across the tiers to ensure proper state is maintained.

12. A computer application development method, comprising:

acquiring a tier agnostic computer application; and

transforming the application into a multiple tier application to facilitate distributed processing.

13. The method of claim 12, transforming comprising linking the application to one or more pre-split libraries.

14. The method of claim 12, transforming comprising injecting one or more co-routines and/or asynchronous calls to facilitate interaction across tiers.

15. The method of claim 12, transforming further comprising preserving state across tiers.

16. The method of claim 12, further comprising automatically transforming the application as a function of program analysis and/or execution context.

17. The method of claim 12, further comprising compiling the multiple tier application into an intermediate language representation.

18. The method of claim 12, further comprising testing the multiple tier application in a protected and/or simulated distributed environment.

19. A dynamic programming system, comprising:

means for obtaining execution context; and

means for automatically transforming a single tier application into a multiple tier application as a function of the execution context.

20. The system of claim 19, the multiple tier application is runtime adaptive to facilitate dynamic adjustment of distributed computation based on resource availability.