US 6889244

Patent Overview: US 6,889,244 B1

Title: Method and apparatus for passing messages using a fault tolerant storage system

Patent number / application: US 6,889,244 B1; Application No. US 09/703,427

Inventors: Blaine D. Gaither; Bret A. McKee

Original assignee: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP (later listed assignees include Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP and Valtrus Innovations Ltd)

Priority / filing date: 2000-10-31

Publication (grant) date: 2005-05-03

Status per source: Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2022-01-20

Purpose and plain-language scope:
The patent relates to messaging between computer systems. More specifically, it describes a messaging architecture in which messages are transmitted over the interconnection fabric of a fault tolerant storage system (FTSS) and are stored within that fault tolerant storage system. The background describes distributed applications split across nodes (client and server applications on separate computer systems coupled by a network), and discusses middleware/OLTP messaging paradigms including conversational, event-based (publish-and-subscribe), queue-based, request/reply, and unsolicited communication. Queue-based communication requires persistent storage of data, allows clients or servers to store messages in queues, and guarantees delivery of stored messages; queues may be ordered LIFO, FIFO, by time, or by priority, and a collection of queues is administered as a queue space. The excerpt indicates the invention leverages a fault tolerant storage system's interconnection fabric and storage for message passing, in contrast to IPC message queues typically implemented in transient memory and provided by the underlying operating system. The prior-art keywords listed are: message, FTSS, node, transmitting, queue.

Classifications noted: H04L67/00, H04L67/01, H04L67/10, H04L67/1097; G06F9/00, G06F9/06, G06F9/46, G06F9/54; H04L67/2866, H04L67/30, H04L67/303.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6889244/en (fetched 2026-09-17).

What the excerpt does not establish: The full claims are not reproduced, so the precise claimed scope is not verifiable from the excerpt. The excerpt also cuts off mid-sentence in the background—the supplied text includes the phrase "Queue-bas" and then notes omitted text—so the complete discussion of queue-based communication, the detailed description, and any figures or embodiments are unavailable. Claim count, dependency structure, and specific apparatus/means-plus-function language cannot be confirmed. Dates and legal status are as stated in the source and are assumptions, not legal conclusions. This overview deliberately does not address litigation, ownership transfers, validity, or prior art, and no missing facts have been inferred.