System and method for a dynamic protocol framework

1. A dynamic protocol framework system comprising:

a registry containing object-oriented elements, each element corresponding to a resource protocol component available to the system;

a configurator unit for building two or more candidate protocol stacks from the object-oriented elements based on protocol specifications and for building and configuring a functional protocol stack from one of the candidate protocol stacks,

wherein protocol components in the functional protocol stack are interconnected via reconfigurable connector elements,

wherein each connector element is reconfigurable to enable cloning and merging of connector elements,

wherein two connector elements merge by maintaining respective existing connections to protocol components on respective outer ends of the two connector elements, by disconnecting respective connections on their respective inner ends of the two connector elements to a same inner protocol component, and merging into one connector element; and

a synchronization manager monitoring the building and re-configuration of protocol stacks for consistency with the protocol specifications and monitoring for compatibility and interoperability of protocol stacks of end-to-end communicating processes.

2. A dynamic protocol framework system comprising:

a registry containing object-oriented elements, each element corresponding to a resource protocol component available to the system;

a configurator unit for building two or more candidate protocol stacks from the object-oriented elements based on protocol specifications and for building and configuring a functional protocol stack from one of the candidate protocol stacks

wherein protocol components in the functional protocol stack are interconnected via reconfigurable connector elements,

wherein each connector element is reconfigurable to enable cloning and merging of connector elements,

wherein each connector element is arranged to enable swapping of a protocol component to which it is connected,

wherein each connector element establishes a connection to a new protocol component, while maintaining its active connection to an old protocol component, and disconnecting the connection to the old protocol components at an appropriate instance with respect to activation of the connection to the new protocol component; and

a synchronization manager monitoring the building and re-configuration of protocol stacks for consistency with the protocol specifications and monitoring for compatibility and interoperability of protocol stacks of end-to-end communicating processes.

3. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , comprising a parser unit for interpreting the protocol specifications and creating protocol stack specifications based on the protocol specifications, and the object-oriented elements for the building of the candidate protocol stacks by the configurator unit are selected based on matching requirements in each layer of the protocol stack specifications.

4. The system as claimed in claim 3 , wherein the configurator builds a layered network of selected elements from the registry, the layered network comprising protocol graphs interconnecting the selected elements of different layers, and the candidate protocol stacks are derived from the protocol graphs in stages.

5. The system as claimed in claim 4 , wherein the deriving of the candidate protocol stacks from the protocol graphs comprises prioritising the selected elements in the respective layers of the layered network.

6. The system as claimed in claim 4 , wherein the protocol graphs reflect dependencies between the selected elements, and the deriving comprises selecting valid dependencies between elements.

7. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , wherein the configurator unit selects the candidate protocol stack for building and configuring the functional protocol stack based on synchronising sender and receiver available functional protocol stack.

8. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , wherein each connector element clones itself by maintaining existing connections to protocol components on an outer end of the connector element, splitting the connector element into two connector elements, and binding inner ends of the two connector elements to a new protocol component.

9. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , wherein each connector element is arranged to enable swapping of a protocol component to which the connector element is connected.

10. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , wherein the system is arranged such that the registry is maintained utilising auto-discovery of available protocol resources.

11. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , wherein each object-oriented element comprises associated data representing one or more of a group consisting of a name of the corresponding protocol component, properties of the corresponding protocol component, supported format of the corresponding protocol component, and propriety of the corresponding protocol component.

12. The system as claimed in claim 11 , wherein search criteria for building the candidate protocol stacks comprises keywords for matching with the associated data of the respective object-oriented elements.

13. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , wherein the configurator unit is arranged for protocol stack specification during coding of applications, for configuration of protocol stacks during communication connections setup, and for on-the-fly reconfiguration of protocol stacks including adding, removing and swapping of protocol components.

14. The system as claimed in claims 1 or 2 , wherein the protocol stack comprises a non-linear protocol stack for optimizing duplicated processing and/or for combining multiple linear protocol stack and sharing protocol components in multicast processes.