Priority-driven boxcarring of action requests from component-driven cloud applications

A user device running a middleware application, including:

• a middleware application, running on the user device, coupled in communication with a data consuming application and a browser or app running on the user device, and also coupled in communication with at least one server through the browser or app;
• wherein the middleware application receives action requests from the data consuming application qualified by priority labels applied to regions and components in the regions and returns data received from the server responsive to the action requests;
• wherein the priority labels differentiate among display regions rendered by the data consuming application and at least some of the priority labels further differentiate among components within respective display regions;
• wherein the action requests that are qualified by higher priority labels are dispatched ahead of the action requests with lower priority labels;
• and
• wherein the middleware application batches the action requests into batches based at least in part on the priority labels, into boxcars segregated by priority label according to a predetermined segregation schedule, and dispatches the boxcars of batched action requests.

A server running a dispatching application, including:

• the dispatcher running on the server and coupled in communication with a multiplicity (100 or more) of middleware applications running on respective user devices and one or more application programs running on the server;
• wherein the dispatcher receives boxcarred batches of action requests from the middleware applications in priority-based batches, forwards the action requests to the application programs, and returns responsive boxcars of completed responses;
• and
• wherein the dispatcher further calculates a server processing time as a difference between when a particular boxcar of action requests is received and when a respective boxcar of completed responses is ready to be returned and further reports the calculated server processing time back to the middleware application for the respective boxcar of completed responses.

A method that conserves connections between a browser or app running on a user device and at least one server, including:

• running a middleware application on the user device, coupled in communication with a data consuming application and a browser or app running on the user device, and also coupled in communication with at least one server through the browser or app;
• the middleware application receiving action requests from the data consuming application qualified by priority labels applied to regions and components in the regions and returns data received from the server responsive to the action requests;
• wherein the priority labels differentiate among display regions rendered by the data consuming application and at least some of the priority labels further differentiate among components within respective display regions;
• and
• the middleware application batching the action requests into batches based at least in part on the priority labels, into boxcars segregated by priority label according to a predetermined segregation schedule, and dispatching the boxcars of batched action requests to the server.

A method that conserves connections between a browser or app running on a user device and at least one server, including:

• a dispatcher running on the server and coupled in communication with a multiplicity of middleware applications running on respective user devices and one or more application programs running on the server;
• the dispatcher receiving boxcarred batches of action requests in priority-based batches from the middleware applications, forwarding the action requests to the application programs, and returning responsive boxcars of completed responses;
• and
• the dispatcher further calculating a server processing time as a difference between when a particular boxcar of action requests is received and when a respective boxcar of completed responses is ready to be returned and further reporting the calculated server processing time back to the middleware application for the respective boxcar of completed responses.