Cooperative processing interface and communication broker for heterogeneous computing environments

摘要

An object interface is disclosed that supports three modes of inter-object communication -- message processing (store and forward), conversational communication, and remote procedure call. A service broker manages service requests from, and responsive services provided by, a plurality of clients and servers, respectively, which may reside on different hardware platforms and operating systems and may be connected to computer networks having different network architectures and associated communications protocols. The broker manages the service offerings from servers and service requests from clients, and clients and servers communicate and exchange information with one another via the broker. The service broker includes different application programming interfaces for allowing participants to access the functionality of the service broker.