Patent ID: 6718327
Filing Date: 2004-04-06
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
A system, comprising:file system maintaining files on a fault-tolerant platform, the file system coupled for communication with a network operable to perform file operations requested over the network, the file system providing strictly enforced, network-wide file locks; queue implemented in queue data structures stored in the file system, wherein the queue data structures comprise (i) a directory for storing queue entry files, (ii) a kernel file, the kernel file including a header and a plurality of slots, each slot potentially representing an entry in a queue entry file, and (iii) a notification file; plurality of clients on the network coupled to the file system by the network, each client operable to add an entry to a queue, to remove and process an entry from the queue, or both to add and to remove and process entries from the queue, wherein each client that is operable to add an entry is configured to invoke separately from other clients an add method, and each client that is operable to remove and process an entry is configured to invoke separately from other clients a remove method; and a notification mechanism by which each client is registered for changes in the notification file when the client removes an entry from the queue, the notification mechanism notifying and waking each registered client when an entry is added to the queue and an attribute of the notification file is changed; wherein: the file system file locks are used to synchronize access to the queue data structures by the clients without use of a master synchronization process.