Patent ID: 7895069

Claim:
A system for processing a plurality of work items shared by a plurality of data processing systems, said system comprising: a processor; a system memory coupled to said processor; and a computer-usable medium embodying computer program product, wherein said computer-usable medium includes computer program code for: connecting said system to a database server via a wide-area network, wherein said database server is also connected said plurality of data processing systems via said wide-area network, wherein said database server includes a work items list and an agent active list, wherein said work items list contains a plurality of work items corresponding to a respective agent, wherein said agent active list contains a last update time value for each agent; determining whether or not there is a hung agent in said agent active list, wherein an agent is considered as a hung agent when a last update time value of said agent is greater than the current time value minus a predetermined time-out value; and in response to a determination that there is a hung agent in said agent active list releasing any associated work item from said hung agent, and removing said hung agent from said agent active list.