METHOD AND APPROACH TO HOSTING VERSIONED WEB SERVICES

• US 20100185902A1
• Filed: 03/29/2010
• Published: 07/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/06/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: GlobalFoundries, Inc.
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Frank, David C., Fong, Liana Liyow, Lam, Linh Hue, Fang, Ru, Vignola, Christopher P.
• Granted Patent: US 8,037,025 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/48
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

A method for hosting versioned web services includes steps of: receiving a request from a service requestor, the request comprising version metadata; parsing the request; extracting the version metadata from the parsing step; and locating a target implementation version using the version metadata. If the target implementation version is located, the method proceeds by dynamically routing the versioned request to the target implementation version.

Claims

1. A method for hosting versioned web services, comprising steps of:

receiving a service interface request from a service requestor, the request comprising;

version metadata describing a supported interface version and any set of other compatible supported interface versions for the web service, wherein said supported interface version comprises a description of service interface characteristics of the web service;

parsing the service interface request;

extracting the version metadata from the parsing step;

dynamically map the supported interface version from the extracted version metadata to a target implementation version at a target destination; and

dynamically routing the service interface request to the target destination.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the locating step comprises:

invoking a version selection algorithm to select the target implementation version; and

receiving from the version selection algorithm a service context and the implementation version corresponding to the request.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of dynamically routing comprises

routing the service interface request through a service bus to an endpoint of the target implementation version.

4. The method of claim 2 further comprising steps of:

creating a new version group member when a new implementation version of a service is installed; and

adding its version metadata to an existing hosting configuration to preserve configuration settings, wherein said configuration settings are used for mapping.

5. The method of claim 4 further comprising a step of

adding attributes comprising a contract version, an implementation version, and its associated implementation endpoint, and tunable parameters comprising an active interface set, a version state, and a default indicator to the version metadata.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the version metadata can be extended to comprise other attributes.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the version metadata comprises time-based version routing parameters.

8. The method of claim 6 wherein the attributes can be modified to control system version selection behavior.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising a step of:

returning an error to the service requestor if the target implementation version is not located.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the steps are performed at runtime.

11. A computer program product tangibly embodied on a computer readable medium and comprising code that, when executed, enables a computer to:

receive a request from a service requestor, the request comprising version metadata describing a supported interface version and any set of other compatible supported interface versions for the web service, wherein said supported interface version comprises a description of service interface characteristics of the web service;

parse the service interface request;

extract the version metadata from the parsing step;

dynamically map the supported interface version from the extracted version metadata to a target implementation version at a target destination; and

dynamically route the service interface request to the target destination.

12. A service for routing versioned service requests, the service comprising steps of:

receiving a request from a service requestor, the request comprising version metadata describing a supported interface version and any set of other compatible supported interface versions for the web service, wherein said supported interface version comprises a description of service interface characteristics of the web service;

parsing the service interface request;

extracting the version metadata from the parsing step; and

dynamically mapping the supported interface version from the extracted version metadata to a target implementation version at a target destination.

13. The service of claim 12 further comprising a step of:

dynamically routing the service interface request to the target destination.