Federated Session Manager for Microservice Continuity
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Solution Overview
Problem
In microservice architectures, session management across multiple back-end microservices and channels is challenging, particularly when a client moves between services, leading to session loss and security issues due to the lack of standardized federated session management across heterogeneous environments.
Innovation Solution
A federated session management system that verifies unique user identification credentials, creates and maps client and session identification tokens, enables access to microservices, and replicates sessions across multiple client devices using a session repository, ensuring continuity and security through standardized protocols like SAML.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If microservice architecture is implemented with stateless back-end services, then system flexibility and ease of deployment are improved, but session management continuity and user experience deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a session management intermediary layer that sits between the stateless microservices and the client. This intermediary maintains session state and manages session identifiers, allowing microservices to remain stateless while preserving session continuity. The intermediary translates client session requests into microservice-compatible stateless interactions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent moves session management from the microservice layer to a separate session management layer, adding a new dimension to the architecture. This separation allows microservices to focus on business logic while the session management layer handles state persistence, resolving the contradiction between stateless microservices and session continuity.
2Speed
If session state is maintained on individual microservice instances, then session access speed is improved, but session portability across services deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal session management mechanism that works across all microservice instances. The session identifier system is designed to be service-agnostic, allowing the same session to be accessed across different microservices without instance-specific bindings, thus achieving both fast access and high portability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments session management into two independent parts: session state storage (in the session repository) and session identifier generation/validation (in the session management layer). This segmentation allows session data to be portable while maintaining fast access through efficient identifier-based retrieval.
3Adaptability or versatility
If federated session management is implemented across heterogeneous environments, then session compatibility is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a homogeneous session identifier format and management protocol that works uniformly across heterogeneous microservice environments. By standardizing the session management interface and data format, the system achieves broad compatibility without proportionally increasing complexity, as the same mechanisms apply regardless of the underlying service heterogeneity.
Data Source
AI summary
Computer processors are configured to verify a unique user identification credential for a requesting user of a first client in response to receiving request for access to a microservice process from the user via the first client; create a client identification token in response to verifying a unique user identification credential for the user, and a session identification token for the request; pass the session identification token to the requesting client mapped to the client identification token; enable requested access by the first client to the requested microservice process in association with the session identification token in a session that is persisted to a session repository identified by the session identification token; and cause the requesting client to replicate the persisted session in association with the session identification token.