Patent ID: 7150023

Claim:
A method for controlling the use of a resource by at least one process in a data processing system having an inter-process communication mechanism provided with storage facilities that do not rely on the functioning of processes that use the inter-process communication mechanism, comprising the steps of: providing a licence controller; communicating, at an allowed work unit rate for the resource, between the at least one process and the licence controller by storing at least one parameter in the storage facilities provided by the inter-process communication; and, in the at least one process, controlling the use of the resource by the process according to the parameter, wherein the processes comprise a plurality of identical processes, and wherein the step of communicating comprises having the licence controller update the inter-process communication of said identical processes while sharing use of the resource between said identical processes, and said method further comprising: monitoring a use amount of the resource by each of said identical processes to determine if any of said identical processes are using the resource at a rate below a predetermined amount; and if the monitoring is such that at least one of said identical processes is using the resource at a rate below the predetermined amount, updating the inter-process communication such that the at least one of said identical processes are provided with no allocation of the resource and the resource is divided among the other ones of said identical processes that are using the resource at a rate at or above the predetermined amount.