Appeal No. 2003-0994
Application No. 08/579,544
merged or split status. An object request broker with a routing
table decides which of the multiple instances of the object
should be invoked. A heuristic is used to make the decision.
Appellants' specification at page 1, lines 22-28; page 4, lines
16-18; and page 20, lines 12-21.
Claim 16 is representative of the claimed invention and is
reproduced as follows:
16. In a computer system including an object and at least one
invoker, wherein said object is invocable by said at least one
invoker, a method of managing said object at run-time, said
method comprising:
(a) providing multiple, functionally equivalent,
instantiated instances of said object, each instance of said
multiple instances of said object drawn from common class source
code and being a candidate for invocation upon an invocation of
said object;
(b) receiving, from an invoker that is unaware that there
are multiple instances of said object, said invocation of said
object, said invocation identifying said object and being
indescriptive of said multiple instances of said object, wherein
said invocation does not specify a particular one of said
multiple instances of said object to be invoked; and
(c) invoking, transparent to said invoker, any one instance
of said multiple instances of said object in response to said
invocation of said object.
References
The references relied on by the Examiner are as follows:
Travis, Jr. et al. 5,280,610 Jan. 18, 1994
(Travis)
Georgiadis et al. 5,283,897 Feb. 1, 1994
(Georgiadis)
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