Patent Application
20080016194
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention. The embodiments illustrated herein are presently preferred, it being understood, however, that the invention is not limited to the precise arrangements and instrumentalities shown, wherein:
Embodiments of the present invention provide a method, system and computer program product for dispatching request fragments from a response aggregating surrogate. In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, dependency information for fragments in a dynamically assembled page can be determined and provided to a surrogate server in the edgified network. A dependency engine coupled to the surrogate server can use the dependency information to order the loading of each of the fragments, in parallel groups where appropriate in order both to assure the presence of dependencies for dependant fragments and also to enhance performance through parallel fragment loads where possible.
In further illustration,
Notably, the surrogate server 130 can be configured to assemble dynamic pages for delivery to the content requesting clients 120 in response to content requests from the content requesting clients 120. The dynamic pages can include a set of fragments 160 provided by one or more fragment sources 150 also communicatively coupled to the surrogate server 130 over the computer communications network 140. Each of the fragments 160 can be arranged to form the dynamic page. At least one of the fragments 160, however, can depend on the presence of at least one other of the fragments 160.
In this regard, a dependency hierarchy can be defined by the fragments 160 in accordance with the interdependent relationships among the fragments 160. To facilitate the loading of dependent ones of the fragments in proper order, without resorting to a sequential loading of the fragments 160, dependency data 170 provided by the origin server 120 can be processed in a dependency engine 200. The dependency engine can include program code enabled to group different ones of the fragments 160 for loading in sequence so as to satisfy the dependencies of the fragments 160 while achieving some parallel loading of others of the fragments 160.
In more particular illustration,
In block 240, the groups can be sorted in proper sequence to ensure that those fragments that are depended upon by other fragments are loaded prior to the other fragments. Thereafter, in block 250, the first group to be loaded can be retrieved and aggregated. In decision block 260, if additional groups remain to be loaded, in block 270 the next group to be loaded can be retrieved and aggregated. This process can continue for all fragment groups. When no additional fragment groups remain to be aggregated, in block 280 the dynamically aggregated page can be returned to the content requester for rendering. In this way, the dependency requirements of the fragments can be fulfilled during aggregation while allowing for some efficiencies in parallel loading portions of the fragments.
Embodiments of the invention can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardware and software elements. In a preferred embodiment, the invention is implemented in software, which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software, microcode, and the like. Furthermore, the invention can take the form of a computer program product accessible from a computer-usable or computer-readable medium providing program code for use by or in connection with a computer or any instruction execution system.
For the purposes of this description, a computer-usable or computer readable medium can be any apparatus that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. The medium can be an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system (or apparatus or device) or a propagation medium. Examples of a computer-readable medium include a semiconductor or solid state memory, magnetic tape, a removable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a rigid magnetic disk and an optical disk. Current examples of optical disks include compact disk—read only memory (CD-ROM), compact disk—read/write (CD-R/W) and DVD.
A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing program code will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can include local memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at least some program code in order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulk storage during execution. Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards, displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system either directly or through intervening I/O controllers. Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system to become coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modem and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currently available types of network adapters.
