Patent ID: 7370118

Claim:
A method of communicating between service nodes in a service grid comprising: transmitting a requesting service node message from a requesting service node in a service grid directed to a destination service node in the service grid, the requesting service node message having a requesting service node message format associated with a version of the requesting service node; receiving the requesting service node message at an inter-operability service in the requesting service node message format; and determining a destination service node message format for the requesting service node message based on a version of the destination service node, wherein determining further comprises: requesting the version of the destination service node from the destination service node; receiving the version of the destination service node at the inter-operability service; determining whether the version of the destination service node is known at the inter-operability service; converting the requesting service node message from the requesting service node message format to the destination service node message format at the inter-operability service responsive to determining that the version of the destination service node is known at the inter-operability service; updating the version of the destination service node to a most current version at the inter-operability service responsive to determining that the version of the destination service node is unknown at the inter-operability service; converting the requesting service node message from the requesting service node message format to the most current version at the inter-operability service to provide the requesting service node message in the destination service node message format; and transmitting the requesting service node message from the inter-operability service to the destination service node in the destination service node message format.