Abstract: A certain number of agents and tokens are created. A first agent that is assigned a request must obtain a token to process the request. The number of agents which may concurrently process requests are limited by preventing an agent from processing a request unless the agent has an assigned token. An additional agent is created after assigning the token to the first agent, provided that an existing agent is not available to wait for a request, and an unassigned token is available for the additional agent. A certain minimum number of agents is defined and an agent is automatically eliminated when the agent completes a request, provided that the number of agents that are assigned tokens exceeds the minimum number of agents.

Abstract: A method for a first process in a first address space to communicate with an object in a second address space including the steps of determining, during runtime of the first process, that a communication link is needed between the first process and a target object in the second address space, generating a proxy object in the first address space corresponding to the target object, and establishing the communication link between the first process and the target object through the proxy object.

Abstract: A mechanism for passing a request from a calling object in a first address space to a target object in a second address space. First, the request is passed from the calling object to an object request broker (more general term?) to which the calling object is written which normally handles requests to remote objects for the calling object. Responsive to a determination that the target object is foreign to the object request broker, a foreign object request broker to which the target object is written is located. A proxy object is generated according to the protocol of the foreign object request broker and stored in the first address space. A pointer is returned to calling object so that communication from the calling object to the target object may be established through the proxy object.

Abstract: Data processing application requests are processed in a computer system configured as a plurality of nodes with a plurality of interacting processes. Data is requested by an application request originating on a first node. The request data includes data located on a plurality of the nodes. A portion of computer memory on the nodes is established as agent message queues ("AMQ's"). A first process, acting as a coordinating agent, receives an application request on the first node. The coordinating agent generates a plurality of internal requests for the application request. The coordinating agent communicates the internal requests to a fast communication manager process ("FCM") on the first node. The first FCM, sends the internal requests to FCM's on the nodes having the request data ("request data nodes"), for storage in selected AMQ's on the request data nodes. The internal requests are retrieved from the selected AMQ's by processes acting as subordinate agents on the request data nodes.