Message exchange pattern rendezvous abstraction

Abstract

A rendezvous abstraction that is used to correlate messages within message exchange. The rendezvous abstraction may be instantiated to correlate messages regardless of the type of message exchange pattern, and regardless of the underlying protocols used to communication message. Messages exchanges of primitive protocols are modeled as unilateral message exchanges. The rendezvous abstraction is used to correlate messages of the unilateral message exchange, and serves as an abstraction that is used to represented the rendezvous point where the message of the message exchange pattern are handled. Accordingly, instead of focusing on the protocol-specific mechanisms for correlation, if even available, the application author may simply work with a standard rendezvous abstraction.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer program product comprising one or more physical computer-readable media having thereon computer-executable instruction(s) that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system cause the computing system to run a software development program, the software development program including:
 a message exchange rendezvous abstraction mechanism that permits developers to formulate instances of rendezvous abstractions, each for a different message exchange;   a correlation mechanism that permits at least some continuation based runtime activities that pertain to transmitting and/or receiving messages to be correlated with corresponding rendezvous abstractions; and   a plurality of pre-packaged message exchange continuation based activities, each for performing message exchanges of a particular message exchange pattern, each pre-packaged message exchange continuation based activity including a plurality of activities, each for performing at least one message reception and/or transmission and correlating at least one message in the corresponding message exchange.   
     
     
         2 . A computer program product in accordance with  claim 1 , wherein one of the plurality of pre-packaged message exchange continuation based activities is a request-reply message exchange continuation based activity which includes a transmission activity and a reception activity that are correlated through a corresponding rendezvous abstraction. 
     
     
         3 . A computer program product in accordance with  claim 1 , wherein one of the plurality of pre-packaged message exchange continuation based activities is a solicit response message exchange continuation based activity for performing a solicit response message exchange with message correlated through the rendezvous abstraction. 
     
     
         4 . A computer program product in accordance with  claim 2 , wherein the rendezvous abstraction is a correlation handle that includes correlation state for the message exchange.