Transparent and sub-classable proxies

• US 7,647,597 B2
• Filed: 07/13/2005
• Issued: 01/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Anand, Tarun, Kakivaya, Gopala Krishna R., Brumme, Christopher W., Krishnaswamy, Raja
• Primary Examiner(s): CAO, DIEM K
• Application Number:
  US11/180,335
• Publication Number:
  US 20050268309A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,644 Days
• Field of Search: 719/315, 719/319, 719/320, 709/245, 709/246
• US Class Current: 719/319
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/542 Intercept
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/548 Object oriented; Remote method invocation [RMI] non-remote method invocation G06F9/449

Abstract

A system and method for interacting with an object is provided. The system includes a method call interceptor that intercepts a method call made on an object and that routes the method call to a proxy. The method call interceptor is accessible to application code. The system also includes an application code generic proxy that after overriding a base class invocation method can receive intercepted method calls, can invoke methods on the object that the proxy images, can receive results from the object that the proxy images and can pass results to the entity that generated the intercepted method call.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates interaction with an object that is stored either locally or remotely, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory storing instructions which, when executed by the processor, implement a method, the method comprising;

creating a generic proxy representing a local image of the object, wherein the generic proxy is created and modified by an application developer through user accessible application code and represents one type of many types of objects and wherein the generic proxy can be configured to represent any of the many types of objects;

sending a method call to the object from a local calling entity, the method call corresponding to a specific method;

intercepting the method call on the object by an application code accessible method call intercepting process, wherein the application code accessible method call intercepting process populates a data store with data associated with the received method call, and the data store is accessible by the generic proxy;

directly routing the method call to the generic proxy instead of the object;

determining if there is pre-processing to be performed;

locally performing any pre-processing that it is determined should be performed, wherein the pre-processing is dictated by the user accessible application code;

invoking the specific method on the object, comprising;

converting a call stack into a message object utilized to pass data between sinks identified by user accessible application code, wherein the sinks correspond to system-performed functions that are executed on the data in the process of being passed from the generic proxy to the object and are strung together in a chain of sinks; and

traversing the sinks by the message object, wherein the user accessible application code is utilized to control the traversal of the message object between the sinks, and wherein the traversal of the message object between the sinks circumvents a first sink in preference for a second sink based on the user accessible application code;

receiving a first result from the object in response to the method being invoked on the object;

processing the first result into a second result; and

returning the second result to the local calling entity.

2. The system of claim 1, the data store populated with one or more of a method name, at least one input parameter, an input parameter count, at least one type identifier associated with the at least one input parameter, a return parameter count, at least one type identifier associated with returned parameters, method data that defines class/interface, a stack pointer and a heap pointer.

3. The system of claim 1, the data store associated with a message object that can be serialized and passed to a disparate domain.

4. The system of claim 1, the locally performed pre-processing comprises one or more of load-balancing, transaction processing, object migration, object persisting, remote method call monitoring, caching remote and local data, controlling remote method call invocations or optimization of remote call invocation by utilization of one or more neural network paradigms.

5. The system of claim 4, the one or more neural network paradigms comprise at least one of directed search networks, radial basis functions, cerebella model arithmetic computer or function link networks.

6. The system of claim 1, the generic proxy performs proxy post-processing subsequent to receipt of the results from the object.

7. The system of claim 6, proxy post-processing comprises one or more of auditing, transaction processing, object migration, object persisting, remote method call monitoring, caching remote and local data or optimization of remote call invocation by utilization of one or more training systems and methods.

8. In a computing device comprising a processor and memory, a method that facilitates interaction with an object that is stored either locally or remotely, the method comprising:

creating a generic proxy representing a local image of the object, wherein the generic proxy is created and modified by an application developer through user accessible application code and represents one type of many types of objects and wherein the generic proxy can be configured to represent any of the many types of objects;

sending a method call to the object from a local calling entity, the method call corresponding to a specific method;

intercepting the method call on the object by an application code accessible method call intercepting process, wherein the application code accessible method call intercepting process populates a data store with data associated with the received method call, and the data store is accessible by the generic proxy;

directly routing the method call to the generic proxy instead of the object;

determining if there is pre-processing to be performed;

locally performing any pre-processing that it is determined should be performed, wherein the pre-processing is dictated by the user accessible application code;

invoking the specific method on the object, comprising;

converting a call stack into a message object utilized to pass data between sinks identified by user accessible application code, wherein the sinks correspond to system-performed functions that are executed on the data in the process of being passed from the generic proxy to the object and are strung together in a chain of sinks; and

traversing the sinks by the message object, wherein the user accessible application code is utilized to control the traversal of the message object between the sinks, and wherein the traversal of the message object between the sinks circumvents a first sink in preference for a second sink based on the user accessible application code;

receiving a first result from the object in response to the method being invoked on the object;

processing the first result into a second result; and

returning the second result to the local calling entity.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein creating the generic proxy further comprises generating the generic proxy from a base class proxy object.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising overriding a base class method defined in the base class proxy object, the overridden base class method receives the intercepted method call.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising populating a data store associated with the method call with information related to the method call.

12. The method of claim 11, the generic proxy accesses the data store associated with the method call to retrieve information related to the method call.

13. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

determining if there is post-processing to be performed;

performing any post-processing that it is determined should be performed by the generic proxy, wherein the post-processing is performed after receiving the first result from the object.

14. The method of claim 8 wherein the object is stored remotely, the generic proxy utilizes one or more training systems and methods to optimize remote call invocation.

15. The method of claim 14, the one or more training systems and methods comprise at least one of back propagation, Bayesian, fuzzy sets or non-linear regression.

16. The method of claim 8, the pre-processing includes dynamically changing invocation of the method to a second object better suited to process the method indicated by the method call.

17. A computer-readable storage medium storing computer executable instructions that when executed by a processor implement the method recited in claim 8.