Proxy Object Interfaces for Third-Party Executable Integration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing workflow-execution systems face challenges in efficiently integrating and managing third-party executable code within workflows due to outdated plug-in interfaces and difficulties in hiding or modifying methods, leading to compatibility issues and errors.
Innovation Solution
The system generates proxy-object interfaces using automated code generation and wrapper classes to create flexible and robust interfaces for third-party executables, allowing for dynamic method handling and exception management, ensuring compatibility with evolving third-party code.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If existing plug-in interfaces are used to integrate third-party executable code, then integration is achieved, but compatibility issues and errors occur due to outdated interfaces and difficulty in hiding or modifying methods
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a proxy object as an intermediary between the workflow-execution system and third-party executable code. The proxy object generates dynamic proxy classes that wrap the original plug-in classes, providing a buffer layer that enables method hiding, modification, and version compatibility without directly altering the third-party code or the core workflow system.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the integration interface into multiple layers: the original third-party executable code, the generated plug-in classes, and the additional proxy classes. This segmentation allows each layer to maintain its own integrity while enabling controlled interaction, thereby improving both reliability and adaptability.
2Productivity
If automated code generation is used to create plug-in interfaces, then integration speed is improved, but interface obsolescence and method compatibility errors increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic proxy class generation where the proxy classes are created at runtime based on the actual plug-in class structures. This dynamic approach allows the system to adapt to changes in third-party code automatically, maintaining compatibility without requiring manual interface updates, thus resolving the conflict between rapid integration and compatibility reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary analysis of the plug-in class structures before generating proxy classes. By examining the original classes and their methods in advance, the system can pre-configure the proxy classes with appropriate method mappings, hiding, and modifications, ensuring compatibility is built-in from the start rather than being retroactively fixed.
3Device complexity
If direct integration with third-party executables is implemented, then system complexity is reduced, but error management and exception handling become difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The proxy object serves as a mediator that centralizes error management and exception handling. All interactions with third-party executables flow through the proxy, which can uniformly catch, translate, and manage exceptions regardless of the source. This maintains relatively simple integration while significantly improving error management capability.
Data Source
AI summary
The current document is directed to methods and systems that that generate proxy-object interfaces to external executable code for use in workflows executed by a workflow-execution system. The workflow-execution-engine component of a cloud-management system provides one example of a workflow-execution system in which proxy-object interfaces to external executable code are used. In one implementation, an existing automated-code-generation subsystem generates plug-in class declarations that represent one or more external executables. An additional class-wrapping subsystem then generates a proxy class for each code-generated plug-in class.