Generation, validation and reservation of reference handles

Details Generation, validation and reservation of reference handles Generation, validation and reservation of reference handles

2000-06-29

2003-10-21

Homere, Jean R. (Department: 2177)

Data processing: database and file management or data structures

Database design

Data structure types

C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C709S225000, C709S229000, C711S150000, C711S151000, C711S152000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06636874

ABSTRACT:

TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention is related to computer systems for generating, managing and validating reference handles of consumers requiring access to resources.
BACKGROUND
It is not uncommon for software modules operating on computer systems to require access to shared resources. For example, a given computer program may require access to files maintained by a file system, or it may require access to network connections maintained by a network driver. Network drivers may require access to information structures maintained by a network packet classifier. This is a complex arrangement that includes numerous software modules, such as software drivers requiring access to many shared resources and an access supervisor that either maintains the resources or at least intercedes in access by the software modules to the resource.
Such intercession exists for several reasons, one especially important reason being when a software module deletes a resource. If a first software module were to delete a first resource, while other software modules maintain direct pointers to the first resource, the pointers of the other software modules would be unaware of the deletion of the resource and would no longer point to a valid resource. Attempts have been made to solve this problem by notifying software modules when a resource deletion occurs. However, this requires detailed accounting and tracking of software modules and their respective pointers to the resources. As a result, this process is extremely expensive and very complex.
Another attempt to solve this problem involves having an access supervisor intercede when a software module requires access to a particular resource. Interceding ensures that the particular resource still exists before the software module is granted access to the particular resource. Typically, this is accomplished by having the access supervisor issue to each software module a handle to a particular resource, rather than allowing each software module a direct pointer to that particular resource. The software module does not use the handle to access the resource directly. Instead, the software module presents the handle to the access supervisor, which can dereference the handle to obtain a pointer to the resource for that software module. Although this approach allows the access supervisor to have control over the management of the shared resources, prior methods that follow this approach provide only rudimentary control, and thus have several limitations.
First, prior methods are inefficient, expensive and limited in their use because they lack constant-time operations, which is a problem when the number of simultaneously active handles is large. Also, the handle databases of prior methods have limited flexibility because they are not capable of growing and shrinking arbitrarily in an efficient manner. In addition, prior methods lack fast and efficient dereferencing and are ineffective in a multi-threaded environment. Further, prior methods lack efficient processes for recycling handles to increase handle space and to optimize the handle database. Therefore, what is needed is a computer-implemented system for generating and validating reference handles effectively and efficiently that overcomes these limitations.
Another problem associated with prior methods is the inability to efficiently reserve a handle value to indicate lack of a valid handle. Specifically, if one agent or consumer requests a resource handle from another agent or resource consumer, and if the second agent does not have a handle to the requested resource, it would desirable for the handle administration system to provide an efficient mechanism by which the first contacted agent could articulate that it does not have a valid handle to the second agent. One solution might be to, immediately after instantiating a handle database, call the assign routine to assign a handle value to a null reference. However, this approach wastes a location in the handle database, and more importantly, the initially assigned handle will eventually be revoked by the handle recycling routine, thus preventing its use as a guaranteed reserved value.
Whatever the merits of the prior systems and methods, they do not achieve the benefits of the described embodiments.
SUMMARY
To overcome the limitations in the prior art described above, and to overcome other limitations that will become apparent upon reading and understanding the present specification, the described embodiments are embodied in a system and method for generating and validating reference handles for consumers requiring access to resources in a computer system. The generation and validation of reference handles of the described embodiments provide efficient management and administration of consumers' access to resources in numerous computer environments, such as networked computers and non-networked personal computers.
The described embodiments include a resource manager having a handle administrator, a plurality of consumers, and a plurality of resources. In the description that follows, the term “consumer” refers to a software module that, among other things, requires access to a resource (e.g., a printer driver requiring access to a dynamic link library file). The term “resource manager” refers to a software module that either maintains the resources or at least intercedes in access by the consumers to the resource. The resource manager manages handles that it issues to consumers.
The handle administrator includes an assignment routine, a release routine, and a dereference routine. The assignment routine issues new handles, the release routine releases handles that are no longer required (thus rendering the handle invalid), and the dereference routine dereferences handles into a pointer to a resource which entails verifying that the handle is valid. In addition, the described embodiments include an auxiliary sub-routine for managing used and unused records, an expansion sub-routine for efficiently expanding the handle database, a handle recycling sub-routine for recycling handles, a contraction sub-routine for efficiently contracting the handle database, a hysteresis sub-routine for probabilistically contracting the handle database, and a memory allocation failure sub-routine.
A feature of the described embodiments is that handle assignment and release are constant-time operations, which is especially important if the number of simultaneously active handles is large. Another feature is that the handle administrator of the described embodiments has efficient assignment, release, and dereferencing routines that effectively work in a multi-threaded environment. Another feature of the described embodiments is that the size of the database is capable of growing arbitrarily, which is important if the number of handles is unknown ahead of time; and the size of the database is capable of shrinking when possible, which is especially important if the number of handles varies dramatically. Yet another feature of the described embodiments is that if the number of handles issued over a lifetime exceeds the size of the handle space, then handles can be recycled.
Therefore, the handle administrator of the described embodiments is designed to work efficiently and effectively when the number of simultaneously active handles is large, when the number of simultaneously active handles is unknown ahead of time, when the number of simultaneously active handles varies dramatically over time, when handle dereferencing needs to be very fast, when operating in multi-threaded environments, and when the number of handles issued over a lifetime is large relative to the handle space.
In addition, one feature of the described embodiments is the ability to reserve a reference handle value that can be used for an indication of a lack of a valid handle. When the handle database is initially instantiated, at least one handle value is reserved. The reserved handle value is never available for a consumer to use to obtain a pointer to a resource. Whenever a new handle value is compute

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