Simple object access protocol

US7146618B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• Microsoft Corporation · US

Inventors

• Gunnar Mein · Woodinville, US
• Shankar Pal · Redmond, US
• Govinda Dhondu · Bellevue, US
• Thulusalamatom Krishnamurthi Anand · Bellevue, US
• Alexander Sasha Stojanovic · Redmond, US
• Mohsen Al-Ghosein · Redmond, US
• Paul M. Oeuvray · West Vancouver, CA

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 21, 2003
• Grant date: Dec 5, 2006
• Expiry date: Nov 14, 2023

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04L67/02
• WIPO field: Digital communication
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

An application layer protocol is provided on top of HTTP 1.0/1.1 to allow for COM Automation objects to be invoked over the Internet through IIS/ISAPI servers. The format essentially encodes the automation object's name, method to invoke, and any [in], [out], [in, out] parameters that the method signature requires, packages them up into a custom MIME type and marshals it to the ISAPI dynamic link library (DLL) on the IIS/HTTP server. There, the ISAPI DLL contains the logic to unpack the SOAP request, parses it, creates the Automation object, invokes the method with the marshaled parameters, and then returns any [out] parameters to the caller/client using the SOAP protocol. It is a stateless protocol, meaning that object lifetimes only extend to one method, and are recreated between multiple calls to the object.