Patent ID: 7610386

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a state cache storing state information corresponding to at least one stateful conversation between a consuming node and a provider node; a web services routing table comprising one or more routing table entries, the at least one routing table entry comprising a web service operation identifier and at least one endpoint location associated with the web service operation identifier; and, a control point operative to: mediate the transport of web service invocation messages and web service response messages between consuming nodes and providing nodes, access, responsive to a first web service invocation message of the web service invocation messages identifying a web service operation, the web services routing table to identify a providing node to which the first web service invocation message is to be routed; detect stateful conversations between consuming nodes and providing nodes based on attributes of the web service invocation messages and the web service response messages transmitted between the consuming and providing nodes, wherein the attributes include a session, context, or conversation token, store, responsive to detection of initiation of stateful conversations, state information corresponding to newly-initiated stateful conversations in the state cache, wherein the state information for a stateful conversation comprises an affinity relation entry describing the providing node location to which previous web service invocation messages of the stateful conversation have been routed, exchange state information with one or more remote control points, route web service invocation messages associated with stateful conversations to providing nodes based at least in part on affinity relation entries in the state cache, transmit affinity fault messages to the one or more remote control points including information corresponding to a second web service invocation message associated with a first existing stateful conversation for which no state information is stored in the state cache, and transmit the second web service invocation message to the remote control points of the one or more control points that respond to the affinity fault messages.