DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Examiner Notes
(1) In the case of amending the Claimed invention, Applicant is respectfully requested to indicate the portion(s) of the specification which dictate(s) the structure relied on for proper interpretation and also to verify and ascertain the metes and bounds of the claimed invention. This will assist in expediting compact prosecution. MPEP 714.02 recites: “Applicant should also specifically point out the support for any amendments made to the disclosure. See MPEP § 2163.06. An amendment which does not comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.121 (b), (c), (d), and (h) may be held not fully responsive. See MPEP § 714.” Amendments not pointing to specific support in the disclosure may be deemed as not complying with provisions of 37 C.F.R. 1.131 (b), (c), (d), and (h) and therefore held not fully responsive. Generic statements such as "Applicants believe no new matter has been introduced" may be deemed insufficient.
(2) Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in their entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
Remarks
Receipt of Applicant’s Amendment file on 12/04/2025 is acknowledged.
Response to Arguments
Regarding Double Patenting Rejection (against U.S. Patent No. 1120006), Applicant indicated that a terminal disclaimer will be filed to obviate these rejections when the pending claims are in condition for allowance and prior to the payment of the issue fee. This reminder is in place for internal disclaimer filing when the pending claims are in condition for allowance.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 21, 27 and 34 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection (See new reference of Ganesh).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 21, 23-25, 27, 29-31, 34, 36-38 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lipkin et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2018/0302268 A1) in view of Jackson et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2015/0302037 A1), further in view of Ganesh et al. (U.S. Patent No. 6,728,719 B1).
Regarding claim 21, Lipkin teaches a system, comprising: a plurality of computing devices, respectively comprising a processor and a memory, configured to implement a NoSQL database service, wherein the NoSQL database service is configured to:
Receive, via an Application Program Interface (API) of the NoSQL database service, a request to perform a transaction on a plurality of items stored in a database hosted by the NoSQL database service (paragraph [0011], the event response system can receive a request for the set of data from a system application and can determine from which of the repository cluster, the relational database, and the NoSQL database to retrieve the data based on type of the request).
Lipkin does not explicitly disclose: wherein the request is formatted according to the API of the NoSQL database service and specifies one or more operations to perform on the plurality of items to successfully complete the transaction in compliance with Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability (ACID) principles.
Jackson teaches: wherein the request is formatted according to the API of the NoSQL database service and specifies one or more operations to perform on the plurality of items to successfully complete the transaction in compliance with Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability (ACID) principles (paragraph [0160], all replication, JOIN, and trigger events extend these ACID concepts to provide a method of coordinating such distributed work in the scope of a web service between NOSQL, KVS database servers, clusters and Data Center; these web services involved in replication, JOIN and trigger events may be defined as Atomic Transactions, insuring that updates to the database tables are not committed or backed out until the web service is instructed to do so; also see, paragraph [0008], a NoSQL, key/value store (KVS) database may be provided that has transactional integrity and is ACID compliant; also see paragraph [0046], it should be appreciated that any type of request or message format may be used with various aspect of the present invention).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include wherein the request is formatted according to the API of the NoSQL database service and specifies one or more operations to perform on the plurality of items to successfully complete the transaction in compliance with Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability (ACID) principles into data operations of Lipkin.
Motivation to do so would be to include wherein the request is formatted according to the API of the NoSQL database service and specifies one or more operations to perform on the plurality of items to successfully complete the transaction in compliance with Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability (ACID) principles to provide a system that is capable of servicing one or more web-based database requests; a platform is provided that allows web-based service request to be processed in more reliable manner (Jackson, paragraph [0003], line 4-6).
Lipkin as modified by Jackson do not explicitly disclose:
determine to allow performance of the one or more operations of the transaction according to a comparison of between first respective values assigned to the plurality of item by the NoSQL database service that are stored with the plurality of items and second respective values assigned independently of the first respective values and associated with the plurality of items and the request to perform the transaction; and responsive to the determination to allow the performance of the one or more operations of the transaction according to the comparison between the first values assigned to the plurality of items by the NoSQL database service that are stored with the plurality of items and the second respective values assigned independently of the first respective values, perform the one or more operations of the transaction on the plurality of items.
Ganesh teaches: determine to allow performance of the one or more operations of the transaction according to a comparison of between first respective values assigned to the plurality of item by the NoSQL database service that are stored with the plurality of items and second respective values assigned independently of the first respective values and associated with the plurality of items and the request to perform the transaction; (Ganesh, Fig. 3, col. 6, line 25-33, this transaction executes an insert statement; it is not dependent upon any previous transactions; thus, the dep_SCN for the inserted row has a value of ‘0’; this is the same dep_SCN as the ‘Smith’ row, even though the row_CSN associated with the ‘Jones’ row is higher than the row_SCN of the ‘Smith’ row; despite their row_SCN values, it can be seen that neither row is dependent upon the other, and can be ordered entirely independently of the other; in combination with the NoSQL database service taught by Lipkin, it teaches as claimed); and responsive to the determination that the comparison of the first respective values with the second respective values allows performance of the one or more operations of the transaction, perform the one or more operations of the transaction on the plurality of items (col. 17, line 10-25, since transaction TXB, TXC and TXE all have the same dep_SCN, they are permitted to execute independently of each other, including before, after, or in parallel to teach other).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include determining to allow performance of the one or more operations of the transaction according to a comparison of between first respective values assigned to the plurality of item by the NoSQL database service that are stored with the plurality of items and second respective values assigned independently of the first respective values and associated with the plurality of items and the request to perform the transaction; and responsive to the determination to allow the performance of the one or more operations of the transaction according to the comparison between the first values assigned to the plurality of items by the NoSQL database service that are stored with the plurality of items and the second respective values assigned independently of the first respective values, perform the one or more operations of the transaction on the plurality of items into data operations of Lipkin.
Motivation to do so would be to include determine to allow performance of the one or more operations of the transaction according to a comparison of between first respective values assigned to the plurality of item by the NoSQL database service that are stored with the plurality of items and second respective values assigned independently of the first respective values and associated with the plurality of items and the request to perform the transaction; and responsive to the determination to allow the performance of the one or more operations of the transaction according to the comparison between the first values assigned to the plurality of items by the NoSQL database service that are stored with the plurality of items and the second respective values assigned independently of the first respective values, perform the one or more operations of the transaction on the plurality of items for tracking dependencies with respect to uniqueness constraints in a database system (Ganesh, col. 3, line 15-16).
Regarding claim 23, Lipkin as modified by Jackson, and Ganesh teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 21, further teach wherein the one or more operations of the transaction includes at least one write to at least one of the plurality of items (Ganesh, Fig. 3, col. 6, line 25-33, this transaction executes an insert statement; it is not dependent upon any previous transactions; thus, the dep_SCN for the inserted row has a value of ‘0’; this is the same dep_SCN as the ‘Smith’ row, even though the row_CSN associated with the ‘Jones’ row is higher than the row_SCN of the ‘Smith’ row; despite their row_SCN values, it can be seen that neither row is dependent upon the other, and can be ordered entirely independently of the other; also see col. 17, line 10-25, since transaction TXB, TXC and TXE all have the same dep_SCN, they are permitted to execute independently of each other, including before, after, or in parallel to teach other; noted “insert” is interpreted as “write to at least one of the plurality of items”).
Regarding claim 24, Lipkin as modified by Jackson and Ganesh teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 21, further teach wherein the transaction includes at least one read to at least one of the plurality of items (Jackson, paragraph [0108], when a GET request is made for each field individually, the query command would state “SELECT, (FIELDS {FirstName}, {MiddleName}, {LastName}, (WHERE{AccountNumber=123})); noted, “SELECT” statement is interpreted as “read to at least one of the plurality of items”).
Regarding claim 25, Lipkin as modified by Jackson and Ganesh teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 21, further teach wherein the first respective values and the second respective values are sequence numbers (Ganesh, Fig. 3, col. 6, line 25-33, this transaction executes an insert statement; it is not dependent upon any previous transactions; thus, the dep_SCN for the inserted row has a value of ‘0’; this is the same dep_SCN as the ‘Smith’ row, even though the row_CSN associated with the ‘Jones’ row is higher than the row_SCN of the ‘Smith’ row; despite their row_SCN values, it can be seen that neither row is dependent upon the other, and can be ordered entirely independently of the other).
As per claims 27 and 34, these claims are rejected on grounds corresponding to the same rationales given above for rejected claim 21 and are similarly rejected.
As per claims 29-31, these claims are rejected on grounds corresponding to the same rationales given above for rejected claims 23-25 and are similarly rejected.
As per claims 36-38, these claims are rejected on grounds corresponding to the same rationales given above for rejected claims 23-25 and are similarly rejected.
Claims 22, 26, 28, 32, 39 and 41 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lipkin et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2018/0302268 A1) in view of Jackson et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2015/0302037 A1) and Ganesh et al. (U.S. Patent No. 6,728,719 B1), further in view of Raz (U.S. Patent No. 5,504,899).
Regarding claim 22, Lipkin as modified by Jackson and Ganesh teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 21, but do not explicitly disclose: wherein the second respective values are assigned by the NoSQL database service a transaction coordinator node of the NoSQL database service.
Raz teaches: wherein the second respective values are assigned by the NoSQL database service a transaction coordinator node of the NoSQL database service (Raz, col. 18, line 63-67 and col. 19, line 1-6, col. 58, line 29-33, col. 61, line 42-44, transaction scheduler perform three major tasks; it responds to transaction requests by placing the transaction on the transaction list, it schedules the performance of component operation of transactions, and it declares ready transaction; timestamp Ordering (TO) concurrency control mechanism provide serializability and are based on time-stamp ts(Ti) (e.g., a real number) associated with each transaction Ti; timestamps are distinct; when the scheduler is Timestamp Ordering(TO) based and CO is desired, CO can be imposed by enforcing the Timestamp Commitment Ordering Rule; the global transactions may bypass the read and write locks to read data; also, the local transactions may bypass the locks so long as the serializability of the local schedule is not violated; a resource would be stamped with the beginning time of the transaction that last read or wrote to the resource; in combination with the NoSQL database service taught by Lipkin, it teaches as claimed).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include wherein the second respective values are assigned by the NoSQL database service a transaction coordinator node of the NoSQL database service into data operations of Lipkin.
Motivation to do so would be to include wherein the second respective values are assigned by the NoSQL database service a transaction coordinator node of the NoSQL database service to address issue with scheduling the commitment of conflicting global transactions in a distributed transaction processing system without restricting the commit order of local transaction (Raz, col. 1, line 18-21).
Lipkin as modified by Jackson, Ganesh and Raz further teach: determination that the comparison of the first respective values with the second respective values allows performance of the one or more operations of the transaction is performed at one or more storage nodes of the NoSQL database service (Ganesh, Fig. 3, col. 6, line 25-33, this transaction executes an insert statement; it is not dependent upon any previous transactions; thus, the dep_SCN for the inserted row has a value of ‘0’; this is the same dep_SCN as the ‘Smith’ row, even though the row_CSN associated with the ‘Jones’ row is higher than the row_SCN of the ‘Smith’ row; despite their row_SCN values, it can be seen that neither row is dependent upon the other, and can be ordered entirely independently of the other; also see col. 17, line 10-25, since transaction TXB, TXC and TXE all have the same dep_SCN, they are permitted to execute independently of each other, including before, after, or in parallel to teach other).
Regarding claim 26, Lipkin as modified by Jackson, Ganesh teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 21, further teach wherein the NoSQL database service is further configured to: receive a second request to perform a second transaction on a second plurality of items stored in the database hosted by the NoSQL database service (Lipkin, paragraph [0011], the event response system can receive a request for the set of data from a system application and can determine from which of the repository cluster, the relational database, and the NoSQL database to retrieve the data based on type of the request) but do not explicitly disclose: determine that at least one of third respective values assigned to the second plurality of items by the NoSQL database service that are stored along with the plurality of items do not allow performance of the second transaction according to a comparison of the third respective values with fourth respective values associated with the plurality of items and the second request to perform the second transaction; and responsive to the determination that the comparison of the third respective values with the fourth respective values does not allow performance of the second transaction, reject the second transaction on the plurality of items.
Raz teaches: determine that at least one of third respective values assigned to the second plurality of items by the NoSQL database service that are stored along with the plurality of items do not allow performance of the second transaction according to a comparison of the third respective values with fourth respective values associated with the plurality of items and the second request to perform the second transaction (Raz, col. 18, line 63-67 and col. 19, line 1-6, a resource would be stamped with the beginning time of the transaction that last read or wrote to the resource; any transaction attempt to write to resource would first compare its time stamp with any time stamp of the resource, and if the write transaction would have an earlier timestamp, it would be aborted; in combination with the NoSQL database service taught by Lipkin, it teaches as claimed); and responsive to the determination that the comparison of the third respective values with the fourth respective values does not allow performance of the second transaction, reject the second transaction on the plurality of items (Raz, col. 18, line 63-67 and col. 19, line 1-6, a resource would be stamped with the beginning time of the transaction that last read or wrote to the resource; any transaction attempt to write to resource would first compare its time stamp with any time stamp of the resource, and if the write transaction would have an earlier timestamp, it would be aborted).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include: determine that at least one of third respective values assigned to the second plurality of items by the NoSQL database service that are stored along with the plurality of items do not allow performance of the second transaction according to a comparison of the third respective values with fourth respective values associated with the plurality of items and the second request to perform the second transaction; and responsive to the determination that the comparison of the third respective values with the fourth respective values does not allow performance of the second transaction, reject the second transaction on the plurality of items into data operations of Lipkin.
Motivation to do so would be to include: determine that at least one of third respective values assigned to the second plurality of items by the NoSQL database service that are stored along with the plurality of items do not allow performance of the second transaction according to a comparison of the third respective values with fourth respective values associated with the plurality of items and the second request to perform the second transaction; and responsive to the determination that the comparison of the third respective values with the fourth respective values does not allow performance of the second transaction, reject the second transaction on the plurality of items to address issue with scheduling the commitment of conflicting global transactions in a distributed transaction processing system without restricting the commit order of local transaction (Raz, col. 1, line 18-21).
As per claim 28, this claim is rejected on grounds corresponding to the same rationales given above for rejected claim 22 and is similarly rejected.
As per claims 32 and 39, these claims are rejected on grounds corresponding to the same rationales given above for rejected claim 26 and are similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 41, Lipkin as modified by Jackson and Ganesh teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 21, do not explicitly disclose: wherein the attributes comprise at least one of: a timestamp of a latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an identifier of a transaction coordinator that submitted a transaction of the latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest non-transaction write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest read of the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a pending transaction that intends to write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an indication of a successfully checked precondition for the transaction; an indication of whether the at least one item of the plurality of items has been deleted according to a tombstone marker; or a history or set of transactions that have been accepted but not yet performed on the at least one item of the plurality of items.
Raz teaches: wherein the attributes comprise at least one of: a timestamp of a latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an identifier of a transaction coordinator that submitted a transaction of the latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest non-transaction write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest read of the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a pending transaction that intends to write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an indication of a successfully checked precondition for the transaction; an indication of whether the at least one item of the plurality of items has been deleted according to a tombstone marker; or a history or set of transactions that have been accepted but not yet performed on the at least one item of the plurality of items (col. 18, line 63-67 and col. 19, line 1-6, a resource would be stamped with the beginning time of the transaction that last read or wrote to the resource).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include: wherein the attributes comprise at least one of: a timestamp of a latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an identifier of a transaction coordinator that submitted a transaction of the latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest non-transaction write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest read of the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a pending transaction that intends to write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an indication of a successfully checked precondition for the transaction; an indication of whether the at least one item of the plurality of items has been deleted according to a tombstone marker; or a history or set of transactions that have been accepted but not yet performed on the at least one item of the plurality of items into data operations of Lipkin.
Motivation to do so would be to include: wherein the attributes comprise at least one of: a timestamp of a latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an identifier of a transaction coordinator that submitted a transaction of the latest committed transaction operation that has written to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest non-transaction write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a latest read of the at least one item of the plurality of items; a timestamp of a pending transaction that intends to write to the at least one item of the plurality of items; an indication of a successfully checked precondition for the transaction; an indication of whether the at least one item of the plurality of items has been deleted according to a tombstone marker; or a history or set of transactions that have been accepted but not yet performed on the at least one item of the plurality of items to address issue with scheduling the commitment of conflicting global transactions in a distributed transaction processing system without restricting the commit order of local transaction (Raz, col. 1, line 18-21).
Claims 33 and 40 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lipkin et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2018/0302268 A1) in view of Jackson et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2015/0302037 A1) and Ganesh et al. (U.S. Patent No. 6,728,719 B1), further in view of Newman (U.S. Patent No. 10,275,400 B1).
Regarding claim 33, Lipkin as modified by Jackson and Ganesh teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 27, but do not explicitly disclose: wherein the request includes a precondition to be evaluated for at least one of the plurality of items.
Newman teaches: wherein the request includes a precondition to be evaluated for at least one of the plurality of items (col. 8, line 32-38, the updates to the key values may be managed based on a pre-defined condition specified within a transaction request. This pre-condition range is specified using (key, time) ranges. The pre-defined condition is to check if an update to the key-time ranges specified has occurred in the time since the transaction was created but before it could be applied to the database store).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include wherein the request includes a precondition to be evaluated for at least one of the plurality of items data operations of Lipkin.
Motivation to do so would be to include wherein the request includes a precondition to be evaluated for at least one of the plurality of items to form a highly distributed database management system that provide atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability (Newman, col. 1, line 38-40).
As per claim 40, this claim is rejected on grounds corresponding to the same rationales given above for rejected claim 33 and is similarly rejected.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KEN HOANG whose telephone number is (571)272-8401. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30am-5:00pm.
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/KEN HOANG/Examiner, Art Unit 2168
/CHARLES RONES/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2168