Coordinating transactional web services

• US 7,370,053 B2
• Filed: 02/10/2006
• Issued: 05/06/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/05/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Klein, Johannes, Cabrera, Luis Felipe, Thatte, Satish
• Primary Examiner(s): Wu; Yicun
• Application Number:
  US11/350,851
• Publication Number:
  US 20060136427A1
• Time in Patent Office: 816 Days
• Field of Search: 707 1- 6, 707/10, 707200-202
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

The present invention relates to coordinating web services wherein a coordination service acts as a rendezvous point through which participants such as web services may register to obtain protocol information to coordinate an outcome of an activity. The coordination of the activity may be accomplished through behaviors that may be expressed by message exchange protocols prescribed by the participants or web services themselves in an open-ended manner. A method and apparatus is also provided for coordinating web service activity with associated behaviors. Transactional coordination may be performed using the ACID model for activities requiring strict consistency or may be based on compensation actions for long running transactions, for example.

Claims

1. A method for coordinating an activity between a first web service and a second web service, the method comprising:

receiving a request for an activity from the first web service;

defining one or more behaviors associated with the requested activity;

defining a message exchange corresponding to the requested activity;

sending to the first web service an address of a coordination service and an activity identifier corresponding to the requested activity;

receiving a request for information of the message exchange from the second web service after the second web service receives the address of the coordination service and a request to coordinate the requested activity from the first web service;

transmitting to the second web service information on the message exchange corresponding to the requested activity responsive to receiving the request for information of the message exchange from the second web service;

coordinating the requested activity between the first web service and the second web service based on the message exchange.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein each behavior corresponds to a composition of web service function.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the coordinating step comprises accepting the coordination of the activity between the first and second web service if the message exchange corresponding to the requested activity is supported or required in the first web service and the second web service.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of receiving a request for information of the message exchange from the second web service comprises registering second web service to the activity, wherein the second web service registers for a second selected behavior.

5. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the method of claim 1.