Patent ID: 7627867

Claim:
A method of change management of interfaces in a distributed computer system, in which there are multiple versions of an interface describing communication between distributed client and server applications, the method comprising: providing, in a server hosting a server application, an identifier for each version of an interface; providing, in the server, a time interval in each version of an interface in which a client application must contact a server application using a version of the interface associated with the time interval to indicate a requirement to continue use of the associated version of the interface, otherwise support for the associated version of the interface will be withdrawn by the server application in response to expiration of the time interval; in each superseded version of an interface, providing, in the server, a reference to a succeeding version of the interface, wherein the interface itself is used to communicate change to client applications; receiving a request, targeting the server application, from a first version of the interface present on a client computing system; determining, by the server, whether the first version of the interface has been superseded by a second version of the interface supported by the server; transmitting a response to the request, to the client computing system, indicating that the first version of the interface has been superseded by the second version of the interface, in response to a determination that the first version of the interface has been superseded by the second version of the interface, wherein the response includes an indication of the time interval associated with the first version of the interface; providing, in the server, an indication of an expiry date and time in association with the first version of the interface; and transmitting the expiry date and time in the response to the request to the client computing system.