Abstract: Techniques are provided which enable relaxed transactional isolation and optimistic concurrency control in a distributed client-server architecture, and which address the problems of server overloading and network delays known to exist in conventional distributed client-server architectures. In particular, the invention preferably provides client-side caching techniques which advantageously serve to reduce server overloading and effects of network delay.

Abstract: A method of communicating between two business entities, each of the business entities utilizing a different communication protocol, wherein a business conversation is established between the entities, comprises the steps of: providing a business-to-business (B2B) protocol exchange for facilitating communications between the business entities, the B2B protocol exchange being operatively connected to the business entities. The method further includes the step of receiving, at the B2B protocol exchange, a message from one of the business entities in a first communication protocol, translating the received message in the first communication protocol into a translated message in a second protocol used by another of the business entities and sending the translated message to the other business entity. In this manner, the present invention provides a framework for facilitating communication between two business entities implemented using different communication protocols.

Abstract: In a data processing environment where a client requests a server to perform part of its processing, a method of updating the client's version of server-related data without requiring the client to be a server, includes steps of: receiving, at a control point server, a first request from the client requesting that server-related data be transferred from the control point server to the client; and in response to the first request, sending the server-related data from the control point server to the client, along with a unique bind token identifying a version number of the server-related data such that each time the server-related data changes a new unique bind token is associated with the data, where the client uses the server-related data to form a second request for the server to perform part of the client's processing, and where the client sends said bind token to the server as part of the second request.

Abstract: A method of performing workload management within an object-oriented client/server computing environment wherein one of a plurality of servers is chosen to satisfy a client request based on at least one workload management policy, said method, which takes place within the client, includes steps of: deciding whether a client application program has issued a request for a server to do some work; forming an extended object reference based on said request, said extended object reference having, in addition to a server address field and an object key field, at least one additional field; accessing workload management policy data based on said extended object reference; and selecting one of said plurality of servers based on said accessed workload management policy data.

Abstract: A leaky bucket checker which combines synchronous updates with event driven asynchronous updates triggered by packet arrivals. A synchronous update is performed exactly as an event-driven update by assuming that a packet of length zero has arrived at the time of the update. These updates are performed in a round robin fashion on each connection. Therefore, assuming that one such update can be performed in each clock tick, the maximum bit representation of the last update time state variable can be limited to N bits for 2.sup.N total connections. Given the reduced processing and storage costs, a great number of network connections and leaky bucket checkers is possible.