Specific Method of Setting Transport-Specific Properties From Transport-Agnostic Clients

• US 20080177891A1
• Filed: 03/26/2008
• Published: 07/24/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/02/2004
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Barrett, Jeffrey Lee, Wang, Ping, Truty, Gregory Louis, Sitze, Richard Alan
• Application Number:
  US12/056,018
• Publication Number:
  US 20080177891A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/230
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/08 for authentication of entities cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication H04L9/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method and system of allowing the user-defined code to be written in such a way as to be independent on the underlying transport yet still send and receive information via transport-specific artifacts. As such, a user may not be required to develop unique code for each different transport. A developer may set user-defined transport-agnostic properties and associated values without concerning an underlying transport. A deployer will provide an external mapping of those user-defined transport-agnostic properties to one or more specific transports which are to be supported. The system may allow new or different transports to be supported by the user-defined code without requiring the developer to change the user-defined code. Only the mapping information decoupled from the user-defined properties may need to be changed for different transports.

Claims

1. A method of setting transport-specific properties from transport-agnostic clients and servers, comprising:

writing user defined code including user-defined properties and associated values,

wherein the user-defined code is transport-agnostic;

determining and generating mapping information for a specific transport;

providing the mapping information,

wherein the user-defined code is suitable for being sent to an endpoint through a transport specific protocol.

2. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the user-defined code with the mapping information is provided to a runtime engine.

3. The method as described in claim 2, further comprising:

mapping the user-defined code in accordance with the mapping information;

sending the mapped user-defined code in a manner specific to a protocol.

4. The method as described in claim 2, wherein the user-defined code with the mapping information is provided before the runtime engine is invoked.

5. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the deployer provide the mapping information between the user defined properties and a plurality of transport specific entities.

6. The method as described in claim 5, wherein one of the plurality of transport specific entities is a HTTP header.

7. The method as described in claim 5, wherein one of the plurality of transport specific entities is a JMS property.

8. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the runtime utilizes a default mapping information when the mapping information is not provided.

9. A method of providing a programming interface in conjunction with a mapping mechanism, the programming interface being independent of an underlying transport, comprising:

setting a plurality of user-defined properties,

wherein the plurality of user-defined properties are transport-agnostic properties;

including an associated value in each of the plurality of user-defined properties, wherein a collection of the plurality of user-defined properties being sent on an outgoing flow;

including retrieval information of the plurality of user-defined properties and associated values, the retrieval information being used in an incoming flow; and

providing the collection of the plurality of user-defined properties to a deployer, the deployer providing the mapping mechanism to the collection of the plurality of user-defined properties,

wherein the deployer is capable of determining the mapping mechanism for the endpoint via an underlying transport.

10. The method as described in claim 9, further comprising:

mapping the user-defined properties in accordance with the mapping mechanism;

sending the mapped user-defined properties in a manner specific to a protocol,

wherein the user-defined properties with the mapping mechanism is provided to a runtime.

11. The method as described in claim 9, wherein the outgoing flow is a request from a client and a response from the Web server.

12. The method as described in claim 9, wherein a value for each of the plurality of the user-defined property is retrieved from the incoming flow and returned to the user-defined code.

13. A system of setting transport-specific properties from transport-agnostic clients and servers, comprising:

a user-defined code including a plurality of user-defined properties with associated values, the plurality of user-defined properties being transport-agnostic;

a mapping information suitable for mapping the user-defined code for an underlying transport

a deployer for providing the mapping information for the user-defined code;

a runtime engine communicatively coupled to the deployer, the runtime engine for mapping the user-defined code in accordance with the mapping information provided by the deployer,

wherein the runtime engine sends the mapped user-defined code in a manner specific to a protocol to a designated endpoint.

14. The system as described in claim 13, wherein the deployer generates the mapping information.

15. The system as described in claim 13, wherein the runtime utilizes a default mapping information when the mapping information is not provided by the deployer.

16. The system as described in claim 13, wherein the mapping information is a declarative form.

17. The system as described in claim 13, wherein the mapping information is a XML configuration file.

18. The system as described in claim 13, wherein the programming interface is JAX-RPC.

19. A system for allowing transport-agnostic clients and servers to set transport-specific properties, comprising:

means for writing user-defined code including user-defined properties and associated values, the user define code being sent to an endpoint,

wherein the user-defined code is transport-agnostic;

means for determining an underlying transport;

means for generating mapping information based on the transport information;

means for providing the mapping information of the user-defined code.

20. The system as described in claim 19, further comprising:

means for mapping the user defined code in accordance with the mapping information;

means for sending the mapped user-defined code in a manner specific to a protocol,

wherein the user-defined code and the mapping information are provided.