Patent ID: 7792916

Claim:
A method comprising: a first agent receiving a request for exclusive write access to a resource, wherein the request is received from a first process running in a first process group, wherein the first agent is a member of a sharing group; obtaining a temporary system lock on the resource for the first process; creating an exclusive shared variable for the first process, wherein the exclusive shared variable is associated with the resource and the first process at least initially has exclusive write access to the resource associated with the exclusive shared variable while allowing processes in a second process group read access to the exclusive shared variable; sending a replication message to a second agent associated with the second process group to cause the second agent to create a copy of the exclusive shared variable, wherein the second agent is also a member of the sharing group; receiving a commitment from the second agent that indicates that the second agent has successfully created the copy of the exclusive shared variable; releasing the temporary system lock; the first agent notifying the first process that exclusive write access to the resource has been granted; determining that a third process in the first process group is requesting access to the resource associated with the exclusive shared variable; and sending an error message to the third process, wherein the error message indicates that exclusive access to the resource cannot be granted.