Patent ID: 7913244

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: providing, at a server, a web service which is accessible by a URL and which is associated with a version-aware flag that indicates whether multiple versions of the web service can be run side by side on the server and accessed by the same URL, including a first version of the web service, a second version of the web service, and a version handler configured to route incoming web service requests to one of the first or second versions of the web service, based on conversation ids within the requests; receiving at the URL a SOAP request which is directed to the web service, and wherein the SOAP request includes a particular conversation id; using the particular conversation id of the SOAP request to determine whether that SOAP request should be routed to the first version of the web service or the second version of the web service; based on the particular conversation id, sending the SOAP request to the determined version of the web service; and for each version of the web service, maintaining a count of conversations initiated at that web service, and decrementing the count as each conversation is ended, to determine when all current conversations at that version have finished.