Preservation of type information between a client and a server

• US 20070078946A1
• Filed: 12/27/2005
• Published: 04/05/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/12/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kothari, Nikhil, Yang, Ting-hao, Hawkins, Jonathan, Ebbo, David, Niyogi, Shanku
• Granted Patent: US 8,032,657 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/217
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/548 Object oriented; Remote method invocation [RMI] non-remote method invocation G06F9/449
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/133 Protocols for remote procedure calls [RPC]

Abstract

In a distributed computing system containing multiple entities such as servers and clients, an object passed between the entities is attached with metadata identifying the type of the object and/or types and values of properties associated with the object. Before the object is passed to an entity in the distributed computing system, the object may be serialized into a data format that the receiving entity can understand.

Claims

1. In a distributed computing system including at least one server component (“

server”

) and at least one client component (“

client”

), a computer-implemented method for preserving type information of a server object that is passed from the server to the client, comprising;

passing the server object along with the type information to the client, upon receiving a call from the client.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the server object is further associated with one or more properties and their corresponding types and values.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the type information of the server object is included in a special token.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the call is for a service exposed by the server, and wherein the call induces the server to execute the service to generate the server object.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein information regarding the service is included in a proxy class, which is provided to the client when the client requests the proxy class.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the proxy class defines the service and the type information associated with the server object.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a custom serialization method that serializes the server object, along with any associated information, into a data format that is recognizable by the client.

8. In a distributed computing system including at least one server component (“

server”

) and at least one client component (“

client”

), wherein the server provides at least one service for the client, a computer-implemented method for preserving type information of a client object passed from the client to the server, comprising;

creating the client object; and

sending the client object to the server, wherein the client object is associated with the type information of the client object.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein creating the client object includes instantiating the client object with type information of a server object received by the client.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the server object is associated with one or more properties and their corresponding types and values.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

associating the client object with the one or more properties and their corresponding types and values of the server object.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

modifying the corresponding values of the one or more properties before associating them with the client object.

13. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

serializing the client object and its associated information into a data format that is recognizable by the server.

14. In a distributed computing system including at least one server component (“

server”

) and at least one client component (“

client”

), a computer-implemented method for serializing an object passed between the server and the client, comprising;

serializing a server object that is to be passed to the client, using a custom serialization method, so that the server object is in a data format recognized by the client.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the custom serialization method uses a client custom serialization mechanism identifying the data format recognized by the client.

16. The method of claim 14, further includes:

passing the serialized server object to the client, along with the custom serialization method, so that the client can use the custom serialization method to serialize a client object that is to be passed to the server.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

passing to the client a server custom serialization mechanism identifying a data format recognized by the server, wherein the custom serialization method will use the server custom serialization mechanism to serialize the client object into the data format recognized by the server.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein both the client custom serialization mechanism and the server custom serialization mechanism are plug-ins registered on the server.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein if the client custom serialization mechanism or the server custom serialization mechanism is not available, a default serialization mechanism is used instead.

20. The method of claim 14, wherein the object, after being serialized, is being reformatted before being passed off to a component, the method further comprising:

providing a deserialization mechanism for the component receiving the object to deserialize the serialized object.