Patent ID: 7263700
Filing Date: 2007-08-28
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A computer system comprising an object-based virtual machine environment using multiple heaps enabling a single virtual machine to be resettable thereby avoiding a need to terminate and start a new virtual machine, in which middleware runs successive applications on a single virtual machine, said system including storage for storing objects for running said applications, said storage being logically divided into three heaps: a system heap wherein system classes for said single virtual machine are loaded, linked, verified, initialized and compiled into said system heap, thereby providing subsequent applications with the ability to use these classes without having to reload them and which said system heap is not garbage collected, wherein subsequent applications reuse said classes in said system heap thus eliminating the need for repeating the reloading, linking, verifying and compiling of said classes; a middleware heap which is garbage collected between successive applications; and wherein reusable objects other than class objects that must persist between successive applications, are stored in said middleware heap; a transient heap which is entirely cleared in between successive applications, and which has no garbage collected within the lifetime of an application, said transient heap, being used for storing applications of objects that are used for only the duration of an application, any objects that are pointed to by objects in said system are moved into said middleware heap and including a middleware classloader and an application classloader, wherein objects from classes loaded by the middleware classloader will be created in said middleware heap, and objects from classes loaded by the application classloader will be created in said transient heap; the use of said three heaps enabling a single virtual machine to retain data and objects across multiple applications; the use of said transient heap providing a more efficient method of garbage collection that enables said virtual machine to quickly reset the transient heap thereby creating a greater virtual machine.