Providing remote processing services over a distributed communications network

• US 7,568,205 B2
• Filed: 05/02/2005
• Issued: 07/28/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/06/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Guthrie, Scott D, Christensen, Yann E, Christensen, Erik B
• Primary Examiner(s): Ho; Andy
• Application Number:
  US11/120,511
• Publication Number:
  US 20050193097A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,548 Days
• Field of Search: 719/330
• US Class Current: 719/330
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/133 Protocols for remote procedure calls [RPC]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

Internet web servers provide processing services, in addition to data and visual content, to provide remote clients with access to processing services located on servers. The client processes communicate with these service providing servers over a distributed network like the Internet using standard HTTP communications protocol and XML data exchange language. Client processes send an HTTP request to a remote server for processing. This processing request may contain input data that is to be used in responding to the request. The server processes the request using the input data, and possibly other data obtained from remote databases, and returns a resultant XML specified data packet. This processing requests, may be initiated using a web browser from an HTML based web page or using a smart client process that simply sends a processing request along with input data and consumes the resultant data packet. The server provides these web services accessed by the client process by allowing the client to access a URL referencing a source code file containing class specifications that may be dynamically compiled into an executable object whenever an executable object corresponding to the current version of the source code referenced by a URL does not exist on the server.

Claims

1. A method of providing remote computing services executed upon a server having mass data storage and network communications to remote clients, the method comprising:

storing a source code file within the mass storage of the server;

receiving a processing service request from a remote client corresponding to a requested processing service specified within the source code file and wherein the processing service request has a packet payload body data block;

activating a data processing object corresponding to the processing service requested from the remote client;

extracting from the packet payload body data block one or more input arguments to be passed to the data processing object;

converting the one or more input arguments from the payload body data block into input data that can be processed by the data processing object;

executing the data processing object using the input data to generate response data;

converting the response data into textual data for the remote client in a data response packet; and

transmitting the data response packet to the remote client in response to the processing service request.

2. A method according to claim 1, wherein the server receives the processing service request having a packet payload body data block and transmits the data response packet using an HTTP communications protocol.

3. A method according to claim 2, wherein the source code file is stored within the mass storage of the server at a location corresponding to a URL for the processing service request.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the activating step further comprises:

extracting from the packet payload body data block an ID corresponding to the requested processing service.

5. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether the data processing object corresponding to the requested processing service is located within a web services library;

determining whether any data processing object found within the web services library corresponds to the data processing object generated by compiling the data processing class for the requested processing service contained within the source code file;

if the data processing object does not correspond to the data processing object generated by compiling the data processing class for the requested processing service contained within the source code file, automatically compiling the source code file to generate the data processing object for the requested processing service.

6. The method according to claim 5, further comprising storing the data processing object within the web services library following the compilation of the source code file for use by subsequent processing service requests.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein the data processing object generates the data response based upon data retrieved from one or more remote databases specified by the data processing the one or more input arguments.

8. The method according to claim 6, wherein the data processing object may activate and call one or more other data processing objects on the server.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the one or more data processing objects correspond to compiled data processing classes contained within source code files which are not the same as the source code file for the data processing class.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein the one or more data processing objects are dynamically created whenever the one or more data processing objects stored within the web services library do not correspond to a compiled version of the appropriate data processing classes.

11. A computer program data product readable by a computing system and encoding instructions for providing remote computing services executed upon a server having mass data storage and network communications to remote clients, the computer process comprising:

storing a source code file within the mass storage of the server;

receiving a processing service request from a remote client corresponding to a requested processing service specified within the source code file and wherein the processing service request has a packet payload body data block;

activating a data processing object corresponding to the processing service requested from the remote client;

extracting from the packet payload body data block one or more input arguments to be passed to the data processing object;

converting the one or more input arguments from the payload body data block into input data that can be processed by the data processing object;

executing the data processing object using the input data to generate response data;

converting the response data into textual data for the remote client in a data response packet; and

transmitting the data response packet to the remote client in response to the processing service request.

12. A computer program data product according to claim 11, wherein the server receives the processing service request having a packet payload body data block and transmits the data response packet using an HTTP communications protocol.

13. A computer program data product according to claim 12, wherein the source code file is stored within the mass storage of the server at a location corresponding to a URL for the processing service request.

14. The computer program data product according to claim 12, wherein the activating step further comprises:

extracting from the packet payload body data block an ID corresponding to the requested processing service.

15. The computer program data product according to claim 11, further comprising:

determining whether the data processing object corresponding to the requested processing service is located within a web services library;

determining whether any data processing object found within the web services library corresponds to the data processing object generated by compiling the data processing class for the requested processing service contained within the source code file; and

if the data processing object does not correspond to the data processing object generated by compiling the data processing class for the requested processing service contained within the source code file, automatically compiling the source code file to generate the data processing object for the requested processing service.

16. The computer program data product according to claim 15, further comprising storing the data processing object within the web services library following the compilation of the source code file for use by subsequent processing service requests.

17. The computer program data product according to claim 16, wherein the data processing object generates the data response based upon data retrieved from one or more remote databases specified by the data processing the one or more input arguments.

18. The computer program data product according to claim 16, wherein the data processing object may activate and call one or more other data processing objects on the server.

19. The computer program data product according to claim 18, wherein the one or more data processing objects correspond to compiled data processing classes contained within source code files which are not the same as the source code file for the data processing class.

20. The computer program data product according to claim 19, wherein the one or more data processing objects are dynamically created whenever the one or more data processing objects stored within the web services library do not correspond to a compiled version of the appropriate data processing classes.

21. A network server for providing remote computing services executed upon the network server having mass data storage for storing a source code file containing a data processing class corresponding to a data processing object that implements a requested remote processing service, the network server comprising:

a network interface I/O module for receiving a processing service request from a remote client corresponding to a requested processing service specified within a source code file and for transmitting the text passed data response packet to the remote client in response to the processing service request and wherein the processing service request comprises one or more input arguments;

a request processing module for generating a data response corresponding to the processing service request, the request processing module activating the data processing object corresponding to the requested processing service and formatting the data response into a text based data response packet;

a deserialize input argument module for converting the one or more input arguments into input data that can be processed by the data processing object;

an invoke web module for executing the data processing object using the input data to generate response data;

a serialize module for converting the response data into textual data for the remote client in a data response packet; and

a transmittal module for transmitting the data response packet to the remote client.

22. A network server according to claim 21, wherein the server receives the processing service request having a packet payload body data block and transmits the text based data response packet using an HTTP communications protocol.

23. A network server according to claim 22, wherein the source code file is stored within the mass storage of the server at a location corresponding to a URL for the processing service request.

24. The network server according to claim 21, wherein the request processing module further:

extracts from the processing service request an ID corresponding to the requested processing service;

extracts from the processing service request one or more input arguments to be passed to the data processing object;

obtains the data processing object corresponding to the requested processing service; and

causes the data processing object to generate the data response based upon the one or more input arguments.

25. The network server according to claim 24, wherein the request processing module obtains the data processing object from a class compiler module, and wherein the class compiler module comprises:

an obtain/parse web method module for determining whether the data processing object corresponding to the requested processing service is located within a web services library;

a compile class module for compiling the source code file to generate the data processing object; and

a web method attribute module for identifying one or more processing services made available to remote clients by data processing objects generated when a source code file is compiled;

wherein the obtain/parse web method module also determines whether any data processing object found within the web services library corresponds to the data processing object generated by compiling the data processing class for the requested processing service contained within the source code file; and

if the data processing object does not correspond to the data processing object generated by compiling the data processing class for the requested processing service contained within the source code file, the compile class module automatically compiles the source code file to generate the data processing object for the requested processing service.

26. The network server according to claim 25, wherein the class compiler module further comprises a cache compiled object module for storing the data processing object within the web services library following the compilation of the source code file for use by subsequent processing service requests.

27. The network server according to claim 26, wherein the data processing object generates the data response based upon data retrieved from one or more remote databases specified by the data processing the one or more input arguments.

28. The network server according to claim 26, wherein the data processing object may activate and call one or more other data processing objects on the server.

29. The network server according to claim 28, wherein the one or more data processing objects correspond to compiled data processing classes contained within source code files which are not the same as the source code file for the data processing class.

30. The network server according to claim 29, wherein the one or more data processing objects are dynamically created whenever the one or more data processing objects stored within the web services library do not correspond to a compiled version of the appropriate data processing classes.