Patent ID: 7870267

Claim:
A method, in a data processing system, for correlating communications of multiple protocol sessions into a single global session, comprising: receiving, from an external device of an external data network, a session request message using a first communication protocol; generating a global session in response to receiving the session request message, the global session having a unique logical name and a unique global token associated with the global session; correlating communications with the external device as part of the global session based on the unique logical name of the global session; and correlating communications with internal devices of an internal data network of the data processing system as part of the global session based on the unique global token of the global session, wherein: the global session comprises a least two local sessions with at least one application running on at least one of the internal devices, communications with a first application of the one or more applications are performed in a first local session using either the first communication protocol or a second communication protocol different from the first communication protocol, the first local session has an associated first local session data structure for maintaining session state information for the first local session, communications with a second application of the one or more applications are performed in a second local session using either the second communication protocol or a third communication protocol different from the second communication protocol, the second local session has an associated second local session data structure for maintaining session state information for the second local session, and session state information in the first local session data structure is correlated with session state information in the second local session data structure using the unique global token.