Request Proxy Queuing for Billing System Availability
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Solution Overview
Problem
High-security systems, such as billing systems handling sensitive financial data, face challenges in maintaining availability due to system failures or maintenance downtimes, which complicates coordination with dependent systems like online shopping websites, risking security erosion and user experience.
Innovation Solution
A request proxy system that queues and serializes requests between a first and second computer system, providing emulative outputs to users when the second system is unavailable, and transmits requests when it becomes available, ensuring proper ordering and security protocols are maintained.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the billing system is taken down for maintenance or fails, then security safeguards are maintained, but the availability of the billing system and dependent systems deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a request queue that pre-captures and stores requests from the shopping website before the billing system becomes unavailable. This preliminary action allows the system to maintain availability during downtime by processing queued requests once the billing system resumes operation, thus resolving the contradiction between maintaining security during maintenance and ensuring system availability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a request queue as an intermediary component between the shopping website and the billing system. This mediator buffers requests during billing system unavailability, allowing the shopping website to remain operational while the billing system undergoes maintenance or recovers from failures, thereby maintaining both security and availability.
2Productivity
If measures are implemented to increase billing system availability, then system availability improves, but system complexity and security risk increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the complexity of coordinating availability between separately managed systems by isolating the request queueing functionality into a dedicated component. This extracted mechanism handles the coordination burden independently, allowing the billing system to maintain its security safeguards while the request queue manages availability concerns, thus improving availability without increasing overall system complexity.
3Productivity
If the billing system is made more available, then user experience improves, but security risk of exposing sensitive data increases
Solution Approach 1:
The request queue performs preliminary capture of user requests before they reach the billing system. This allows the shopping website to remain responsive and provide good user experience immediately, while the actual processing occurs later when the billing system is available and secure, thus improving user experience without compromising security.
Solution Approach 2:
The request queue acts as a security-preserving intermediary that decouples user interactions from direct billing system access. Users experience improved responsiveness through immediate request acknowledgment, while the billing system maintains security by processing requests only when available and authenticated, eliminating direct exposure risks.
Data Source
AI summary
One or more requests are received from a first system. The requests are queued in a queue. A serialization group is determined for a request and the request is associated with the determined serialization group. At least a subset of the requests from the queue is transmitted to a second system if the second system is available, including transmitting requests in a respective serialization group to the second system serially in accordance with an ordering of the requests within the respective serialization group.