Time bounding notification delivery in an event driven system

• US 7,886,308 B2
• Filed: 07/28/2008
• Issued: 02/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/02/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Lauzon, Shawn William, Harold, Ward K.
• Primary Examiner(s): WU, QING YUAN
• Application Number:
  US12/180,981
• Publication Number:
  US 20080307437A1
• Time in Patent Office: 925 Days
• Field of Search: 719/318, 714/48
• US Class Current: 719/318
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/485 Task life-cycle, e.g. stopping, restarting, resuming execution G06F9/4881 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications

Abstract

The present disclosure prevents unnecessary delays during a notification delivery process in an event driven system. The unnecessary delays may be caused by waiting for event completion acknowledgments for an unbounded time. Notifications (event handle requests) may be dispatched to all interested parties in parallel. Then, handling acknowledgments from the interested parties may be gathered after a specific delay. Termination requests may be sent to non-responding parties in order to prevent indefinite waiting or an advertent notification cycle. Alternatively, non-responding parties may be removed from a list of listeners which have been registered as interesting parties for a software component in the event driven system.

Claims

1. An event driven system comprising:

a computer network;

a notification broadcaster for sending handle requests for an event;

a plurality of listeners communicatively coupled to the notification broadcaster, each one of the plurality of listeners configured to receive the handle requests and send an acknowledgment after completing an action in accordance with the handle requests, wherein the notification broadcaster proceeds to a next operation after a time bound and sends a termination request to any of the plurality of listeners which have not sent acknowledgements in the time bound to prevent delay from waiting for acknowledgments, wherein each of the plurality of listeners is configured to cancel completing an action in accordance with the handle requests in response to receipt of a termination request, and wherein each of the plurality of listeners is registered as an interested party in a software component in the event driven system and the notification broadcaster cancels the registration as an interested party of any of the plurality of listeners which have not sent acknowledgments in the time bound to prevent future handle requests from being sent to any of the plurality of listeners which have not sent acknowledgments in the time bound.

2. The event driven system as described in claim 1, further comprising a notification dispatcher coupled to the notification broadcaster and the plurality of listeners, wherein the notification dispatcher relays handle requests from the broadcaster to the plurality of listeners and acknowledgements from the plurality of listeners to the broadcaster.

3. The event driven system as described in claim 2, wherein the notification dispatcher sends an acknowledgement to the broadcaster after the notification dispatcher determines that there is no outstanding event handle request.

4. The event driven system as described in claim 3, wherein the outstanding event handle request is terminated after the time bound.

5. The event driven system as described in claim 1, wherein the notification broadcaster sends the handle requests when it detects a triggering event.

6. A non-transitory device readable medium encoded with instructions which, when executed by a device, cause the device to:

register all interested parties of a software component to a listener list, wherein the listener list indicates a plurality of listeners;

detect a triggering event;

send an event handle request, in parallel, to the listeners of the listener list upon detection of the triggering event, wherein the listeners are configured to perform an action related to the event handle request in response to receiving the event handle request;

receive an acknowledgement from a listener in the listener list, wherein the acknowledgment is a completion acknowledgment from the listener when action related to the event handle request is accomplished;

send a termination request to a non-responding listener when the non-responding listener has not sent the acknowledgment in a time bound to prevent delay from waiting for the acknowledgment, wherein the non-responding listener is configured to cancel performance of the event handle request in response to receiving the termination request; and

remove the non-responding listener from the listener list when the non-responding listener has not sent the acknowledgment in the time bound to prevent future event handle requests from being sent to the non-responding listener.

7. The non-transitory device readable medium of claim 6, wherein the instructions also cause the device to:

determine that outstanding event handle requests have been handled in the time bound; and

send an acknowledgement that the outstanding event handle requests have been handled in the time bound.