Persistent personal messaging in a distributed system

摘要

A persistent personal messaging system provides shared memory space functionality supporting a user changing between a plurality of client devices, even within a loosely coupled, distributed system for persistent personal messaging. A user, irrespective of which messaging client they are using, logs on to the system. The act of logging on places user data, representing the user, into the shared memory space. A “contacts” service agent finds the friends and groups that the user belongs to and notifies other users that the user has logged on. Given the on-line status of other users and groups, a “history” service agent will retrieve previous messages from the shared memory space that formed the user's conversations with users and groups, as if the user had never logged off or switched devices. When the user adds a new message to any conversation, the message is added to the shared memory space.

主权项

1. A method for providing persistent messaging services to a population of client devices connected to a distributed network, comprising:
placing a user data in a shared memory space for a user initiating active communications with a persistent messaging service from a client device; locating a message object stored in the shared memory space that matches the user data for a prior messaging session; and sending a historical message derived from the message object to the client device, wherein the historical message comprises at least a portion of the prior messaging session.