PROVIDING ACCESS TO SHARED STATE DATA

• US 20120324034A1
• Filed: 06/14/2011
• Published: 12/20/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: BURKHARDT, JOHN R., RICHARDSON, RANSOM, SCHLEIFER, JASON, LEES, STEVEN
• Granted Patent: US 8,856,260 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/212
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]

Abstract

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for manipulating in-memory data entities are provided. Embodiments of the present invention use a Representational State Transfer (“REST”) web service to manipulate the in-memory data entities. In one embodiment, a “snap shot” is taken of the in-memory data entities at a point in time to create representations of the entities. A hierarchy of the representations is built. The hierarchy is used to make the entities addressable via a URI. Embodiments of the invention may then map the entity representations in the hierarchy to the entities. An embodiment of the invention uses handlers to process a REST style request addressed to an entity representation. The handler reads the command and determines whether the command is authorized for performance on the entity and performs that command, if appropriate.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that when executed by a computing device perform a method of manipulating in-memory data entities, the method comprising:

receiving a request to manipulate in-memory data, wherein the request comprises a manipulation instruction and a uniform resource identifier (“

URI”

), and wherein entities within the in-memory data are not addressable by the URI in the entities'"'"' native form;

generating representations of entities within the in-memory data;

generating a hierarchy of the representations by entity-type and relationships between the entities within the in-memory data;

inspecting the URI to identify segments within the URI;

traversing the hierarchy using the segments to reach a representation of an entity indicated by the URI; and

performing the manipulation instruction on the entity indicated by the URI.

2. The media of claim 1, wherein the request is an HTTP Get request.

3. The media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises determining the request is a Representational State Transfer (“

REST”

) style request and routing the request to a REST web service.

4. The media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises recursively invoking request handlers for each segment of the segments identified in the URI.

5. The media of claim 4, wherein the request handlers have responsibility for managing the in-memory data at a single level of the hierarchy.

6. The media of claim 5, wherein when an individual request handler determines that the URI includes a segment that is addressed to a hierarchal level below a level for which the individual request handler has responsibility, then the individual request handler communicates the request to a different handler with responsibility for managing entities associated with a lower hierarchal level.

7. The media of claim 5, wherein when an individual request handler determines that the URI does not include a segment that is addressed to a hierarchal level below a level for which the individual request handler has management responsibility, then the individual request handler validates the manipulation instruction to determine that the manipulation instruction is authorized.

8. The media of claim 6, wherein the method further comprises communicating to multiple clients that are sharing the in-memory data a state change in one or more entities produced by said performing the manipulation instruction.

9. A method of manipulating in-memory data using Representational State Transfer (“

REST”

) style commands, the method comprising;

generating representations of entities within the in-memory data;

generating a hierarchy of the representations according to entity-type and according to relationships between entities within the in-memory data;

mapping an entity representation within the hierarchy to an entity within the in-memory data;

processing a REST style request by following the URI within the REST style request to the entity representation indicated by the URI and performing a command included in the REST style request on the entity.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the entities comprise one or more of a namespace, a collection, an object, and a property.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the entity is a namespace, wherein the method further comprises authenticating that the command is authorized for operation on namespaces, wherein the following REST style commands are allowed on the namespaces, GET, POST, and DELETE, and wherein a PUT command is not authorized.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the entity is a collection, wherein the method further comprises authenticating that the command is authorized for operation on collections, wherein the following REST style commands are allowed on namespaces, GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein the entity is an object, wherein the method further comprises authenticating that the command is authorized for operation on objects, wherein the following commands are allowed on objects:

reading a current state of the object, creating a new property for the object, creating a new object, and deleting an object.

14. The media of claim 13, wherein the following commands are not supported:

referencing particular objects within a collection and replacing an entire namespace.

15. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that when executed by a computing device perform a method of manipulating shared in-memory data entities that are actively being shared by multiple clients, the method comprising:

generating representations of entities within the shared in-memory data, wherein a shared in-memory data service maintains a true copy of the entities within the shared in-memory data and communicates copies of the entities to client devices that maintain local copies of the entities that are acted on by one or more applications on the client devices, and wherein the sharing service receives updates generated by the application, updates the true copy of the entities, and propagates the updates to each client device that is actively sharing the entities, and wherein the entities are not natively addressable by a uniform resource identifier (“

URI”

);

generating representations of the entities, wherein the representations comprise state information for the entities at a point in time when the representations were generated;

generating a hierarchy of the representations;

receiving a Representational State Transfer (“

REST”

) style request to manipulate the shared in-memory data, wherein the request comprises a URI;

traversing the hierarchy to reach an entity representation indicated by the URI;

confirming that the request complies with one or more rules governing allowed manipulation of the entity;

confirming that the request is still applicable based on a current state of the entity; and

performing the request on an entity mapped to the entity representation.

16. The media of claim 15, wherein the method further comprises communicating to the client devices a state change the entity produced by said performing the request on the entity.

17. The media of claim 15, wherein the entity is one of a namespace, a collection, an object, and a property.

18. The media of claim 17, wherein namespaces are in a first level of the hierarchy, collections are in a second level, objects are in a third level, and properties are in a fourth level.

19. The media of claim 18, wherein the method further comprises recursively invoking request handlers for each level of the hierarchy.

20. The media of claim 19, wherein when an individual request handler determines that the URI is addressed to a representation on a hierarchal level below a level for which the individual request handler has management responsibility then the individual request handler communicates the request to a different handler with management responsibility for a lower level.