Patent ID: 7363630

Claim:
A computer program product for managing one or more queues, embodied on computer readable-material, that includes executable instructions for causing a computer system to: determine that a message in a queue is available for several subscribers to process, wherein at least some of the several subscribers eligible to process the message are in a subscriber pool; track the message to designate a publisher state and one or more subscriber states; allow a first available subscriber from the subscriber pool to process the message; and prevent all other subscribers in the subscriber pool from processing the message so that the message is processed by only one of the subscribers in the subscriber pool; wherein a set of message state information is maintained for each of the subscribers in the subscriber pool, and wherein the instructions to prevent all other subscribers in the subscriber pool from processing the message includes instructions to cause a computer system to: update the message state information for each of the subscribers in the subscriber pool, other than the first available subscriber, to indicate that the message is no longer to be processed by that subscriber.