Abstract: A hive of computing engines, typically including clients, request handlers, process handlers, and task handlers, is used to process of a processing job in order to determine a processing result. A client assigns a processing job to a request handler, which assigns the processing job to a processing handler, which typically assigns one or more tasks of the processing job to one or more task handlers. One implementation uses one or more volunteer operations to identify the request handler, the process handler, and/or one or more task handlers. One implementation updates the request handler and/or the process handler with state information related to the partial processing of the processing job such that the completion of the processing job can be assigned to other process and/or task handlers, such as, but not limited to, in response to a detected error condition.

Abstract: A hive of computing engines, typically including clients, request handlers, and process handlers, is used to process of a processing job in order to determine a processing result. A client assigns a processing job to a request handler, which assigns the processing job to one or more processing handlers. One implementation uses one or more volunteer operations to identify the request handler, and/or the one or more process handlers. One implementation updates the request handler with state information related to the partial processing of the processing job such that the completion of the processing job can be assigned to other one or more process handlers, such as, but not limited to, in response to a detected error condition.

Abstract: Disclosed are mechanisms for reliably storing information across multiple computers networked together, where each of these computers may or may not be a hive node of a hive. This information includes multiple information units. At least one protection unit is generated based on the information units such that the information can be recreated using less than all of these information units and at least one protection unit. A data unit is defined as one or more information units, one or more protection units, or a combination of information and protection units, with each information unit being included in at least one of the data units and each protection unit being included in at least one of the data units. A operation is initiated to store on each of the computers at least one data unit, such that each data unit is stored in at least one of the computers.