Patent ID: 7359919

Claim:
At a requesting computer system in a computerized environment in which a requesting computer system sends request messages to a responding computer system including a unique identifier, and the responding computer system responds to each request message with a response message including a unique identifier, a method of reliably sending request messages, and for reliably receiving response messages, using a request-reply transport such that the responding computer system processes the sent messages according to specified processing instructions, comprising the acts of: establishing a request-reply transport connection including a request leg; sending an initial request message to a responding computer system on the request leg of the request-reply transport connection, the initial request message including the following: a unique identifier that uniquely identifies a communication sequence; a sequence identifier that identifies the message's place in the communication sequence; and a connection contract which describes how messages in the communication sequence initiated by the requesting computer system are to be processed by the responding computing system, the connection contract further specifying the order in which messages are to be processed, regardless of the order they are received at the responding computer system; receiving a failure indication through a failure-indication mechanism of the request-reply transport that the initial request message has failed; sending a cached copy of the initial request message including the unique identifier, the sequence identifier and the connection contract to the responding computer system, wherein the act of sending the cached copy of the initial request message provides the responding computer system with a reply-leg of the request-reply transport connection for sending a response message; and receiving a termination message from the responding computer system indicating that the communication sequence is complete, the termination message including a termination message identifier derived from the communication sequence's unique identifier such that the requesting computer system can verify that the termination message corresponds to the current communication sequence.