Patents by Inventor Martin Mulholland

Martin Mulholland has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9159050
    Abstract: A method for providing atomicity for a unit of work involving a plurality of participants, the method comprising the steps of: sending a prepare request to at least one participant, wherein the request comprises data required for recovery purposes of the unit of work; and on recovery of the unit of work, recovering the unit of work comprising: obtaining the data from the at least one participant; and using the obtained data to recover and preserve the atomicity of the unit of work.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 6, 2006
    Date of Patent: October 13, 2015
    Assignee: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Jose Emir Garza, Stephen James Hobson, Martin Mulholland, Steven Powell
  • Publication number: 20090043845
    Abstract: A method for providing atomicity for a unit of work involving a plurality of participants, the method comprising the steps of: sending a prepare request to at least one participant, wherein the request comprises data required for recovery prurposes of the unit of work; and on recovery of the unit of work, recovering the unit of work comprising: obtaining the data from the at least one participant; and using the obtained data to recover and preserve the atomicity of the unit of work.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 6, 2006
    Publication date: February 12, 2009
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Jose Emir Garza, Stephen James Hobson, Martin Mulholland, Steven Powell
  • Patent number: 6901578
    Abstract: Disclosed is apparatus for processing business data processing activities, the apparatus comprising: an activity instance; and a descriptor for the activity instance associated uniquely with the activity instance; wherein the descriptor includes parameters for determining lifecycle behaviors of said activity instance. The descriptor may be programmable to modify the lifecycle behaviors according to a use made of said activity instance. The use of the activity instance may be responsive to a request by a client. It may also be responsive to a request by an activity instance. The descriptor may be programmable to modify the lifecycle behaviors according to a position in a system hierarchy of the activity instance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 6, 1999
    Date of Patent: May 31, 2005
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: John Anthony Beaven, Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Catherine Griffin, Iain Stuart Caldwell Houston, Martin Mulholland, Ian Robinson, David John Vines
  • Patent number: 6865541
    Abstract: Disclosed is data processing apparatus comprising: means for receiving inputs indicative of results from one or more participants of said one or more sets of data processing tasks; means for mapping each of said inputs to a corresponding mapped value by accessing a mapping table; outcome processor means for accepting the mapped values as inputs and determining an outcome for said one or more sets of data processing tasks; and means, responsive to said means for determining, for transmitting an indicator of said outcome to said one or more participants; wherein the inputs and mapped values of the mapping table are programmably changeable to thus provide a high degree of flexibility with respect to said inputs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 18, 1999
    Date of Patent: March 8, 2005
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: John Anthony Beaven, Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Catherine Griffin, Iain Stuart Caldwell Houston, Martin Mulholland, Ian Robinson, David John Vines
  • Patent number: 6829632
    Abstract: A server processing method for use in a client/server computing system which carries out transactions, has steps of: receiving a command instructing the server to carry out a step of a transaction; beginning the transaction; and determining whether a predetermined triggering event has occurred during the carrying out of the transaction, and only if the triggering event has occurred, creating a means for coordinating the transaction with respect to a plurality of elements that are involved in carrying out the transaction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 9, 1998
    Date of Patent: December 7, 2004
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Martin Mulholland, Kathryn Sarah Warr
  • Patent number: 6675321
    Abstract: A data processing apparatus has a direct access non-volatile memory storage device having a plurality of extent files for storing log records therein; an allocating unit for allocating a current extent file to be used for storing log records; a writing unit for writing log records into the current extent file until the current extent file cannot store any further log records; and a key-pointing unit for performing a key-pointing operation on the written log records when the writing unit has reached the point where no further log records can be stored in the current extent file.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 26, 1999
    Date of Patent: January 6, 2004
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: John Anthony Beaven, Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Martin Mulholland, David John Vines
  • Patent number: 6604183
    Abstract: A data processing apparatus (10, FIG. 1) has a direct access non-volatile storage device (103) on which log records are stored in one or more log files. The processor (101) allocates storage for the log based on possible future requirements. The processor sets the maximum amount of new data that can be written to the log before a key-point operation is performed. When the maximum is reached a key-point is performed. As a result the maximum possible size of the active data written as part of the next key-point can be calculated and storage is allocated accordingly. Should storage become restricted such that the required storage cannot be allocated the data processing apparatus runs in a restricted mode during which the records that are written to the log are concerned with reducing the size of the active data and therefore the next key-point.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 27, 2001
    Date of Patent: August 5, 2003
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: John Anthony Beaven, Martin Mulholland
  • Patent number: 6493714
    Abstract: A data processing apparatus for carrying out a specific business logic data processing task, has a plurality of business activities running on at least one data processing machine, each activity communicates with other activities via a communications protocol in order to carry out the specific business logic data processing task. At least one of the activities includes a plurality of message broker data processing nodes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 1999
    Date of Patent: December 10, 2002
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: John Anthony Beaven, Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Catherine Griffin, Iain Stuart Caldwell Houston, Martin Mulholland, Ian Robinson, David John Vines
  • Publication number: 20020170032
    Abstract: Disclosed are a system, method and computer program for component-based processing, comprising a component specification element, a control flow specification element, a data flow specification element, a resource specification element, a quality of service specification derivation element having for output an application model in combination with a quality of service specification derived by implication from relations between components, control flows, data flows and resources, and a runtime engine for deploying said quality of service specification as a runtime contract in a runtime processing environment. Examples of such qualities of service are requirements of a process to have provided for it support for transactionality, recoverability, asynchronous messaging and the like.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 14, 2001
    Publication date: November 14, 2002
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: John Anthony Beaven, Thomas James Freund, Graham Castree Charters, Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Iain Stuart Caldwell Houston, Peter Alexander Lambros, Catherine Susan Griffin, Martin Mulholland, Francis Nicholas Parr, Ian Robinson, David John Vines, Christopher Frank Codella
  • Publication number: 20020073294
    Abstract: A data processing apparatus (10, FIG. 1) has a direct access non-volatile storage device (103) on which log records are stored in one or more log files. The processor (101) allocates storage for the log based on possible future requirements. The processor sets the maximum amount of new data that can be written to the log before a key-point operation is performed. When the maximum is reached a key-point is performed. As a result the maximum possible size of the active data written as part of the next key-point can be calculated and storage is allocated accordingly. Should storage become restricted such that the required storage cannot be allocated the data processing apparatus runs in a restricted mode during which the records that are written to the log are concerned with reducing the size of the active data and therefore the next key-point.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 27, 2001
    Publication date: June 13, 2002
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: John Anthony Beaven, Martin Mulholland
  • Patent number: 6345316
    Abstract: A server processing method for use in a client/server computing system which carries out transactions, includes steps of: receiving a command from a client process to signify the beginning of a transaction; determining whether a local transaction creator exists; and forwarding on the command to another server if a local transaction creator does not exist and for locally creating transaction state data if a local transaction creator does exist.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 9, 1998
    Date of Patent: February 5, 2002
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Martin Mulholland, Kathryn Sarah Warr
  • Patent number: 6301606
    Abstract: A client processing apparatus for use in a client/server computing system which carries out transactions, issues a begin command to signify the beginning of a transaction; sends a substantive transactional command to a remote server, said command including a transaction context having a specific value which indicates that a transaction has been started but transaction objects which represent the transaction have not yet been created; and receives a modified transaction context from said remote server once said remote server has created said transaction objects.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 9, 1998
    Date of Patent: October 9, 2001
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Amanda Elizabeth Chessell, Martin Mulholland, Kathryn Sarah Warr
  • Patent number: 6038589
    Abstract: A server in a client/server computing system where a distributed transaction is being carried out, has: a server resource having local data associated therewith; a software element for receiving a registration request from the server resource requesting that the server resource be registered in a transaction, after the server resource has received the transaction context in the explicit transaction propagation mode; and a software element for creating a distributed transaction object representing the transaction in response to receipt of the registration request, the distributed transaction object persisting until the transaction is completed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 16, 1997
    Date of Patent: March 14, 2000
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Simon Antony James Holdsworth, Martin Mulholland, Kathryn Sarah Warr
  • Patent number: 5925095
    Abstract: Client/server middleware processes a source code client application program so that when the application program signifies the beginning of a transaction using a transaction begin command, the transaction is automatically created locally for a recoverable client and remotely for a non-recoverable client. The source code client application program can thus be written without regard to whether the transaction will be created locally or remotely, the middleware takes care of this function.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 12, 1997
    Date of Patent: July 20, 1999
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Robert Howard High, Jr., Simon Holdsworth, Martin Mulholland, Kathryn Sarah Warr
  • Patent number: 5893912
    Abstract: In brief, an object oriented thread context manager, a method and computer program product are provided for object oriented thread context management, particularly for relational databases working with distributed transactions. A context manager is provided for managing a plurality of ContextControl objects. Each ContextControl object comprises a plurality of methods for creating, resuming and suspending context on a thread for a target object. A ContextCoordinator class is provided for managing calls to the plurality of ContextControl objects. A ContextHandleList is provided for storing context information for the ContextControl objects. A specialized ContextCoordinator is provided for managing calls to a specialized ones of the ContextControl objects. A DatabaseContextCoordinator is an example of the specialized ContextCoordinator. The specialized ones of the ContextControl objects are registered and unregistered with the ContextCoordinator class and then registered DatabaseContextCoordinator.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 13, 1997
    Date of Patent: April 13, 1999
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Thomas James Freund, Robert Howard High, Jr., Gordon Douglas Hutchison, Martin Mulholland, Charlie James Redlin, Peter John Schommer, Kathryn Sarah Warr