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 .
Claims 1, 14, and 20 are currently amended. No new claims have been added. No claims have been canceled. Claims 1-20 are pending in this application.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 10/3/2025 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
Regarding the applicant’s remarks, pgs. 6-7, that Li in view of Goel does not teach the newly amended claim limitations, the examiner concedes. As such, a new reference has been applied to teach the amended limitation. The new grounds of rejection do not rely upon Li or Goel to teach the added limitation, and as such the rejection under 35 USC § 103 is maintained.
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, 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 1-2, 4-5, 8, 14, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable by Li et. al. (US 20220067044 A1) in view of A (US 20210328863 A1) in view of Goel (US 20220200951 A1) in further view of Bonas (US 10938691 B1).
As per claim 1, Li discloses:
A method, comprising: assembling a plurality of stateful processes in a cluster (“A user or database kernel may flexibly configure and assemble microservice components based on a current service scenario”, 0074 ; Examiner Note: under B.R.I., an assembly of microservices equates to a cluster of stateful processes)
each of the stateful processes includes at least one computing object that is configured at least in part by a management system to interface with other stateful processes in the cluster (“In an embodiment, the following interfaces may be defined to implement communication between service components”, 0098 ; see table below paragraph 0098 on pages 6 and 7 ; see figure 6B- there are three computing objects (lexical analysis, syntax analysis, and semantic analysis) within the microservice ; Examiner Note: a service component equates to a stateful process, and within the parser microservice component the lexical analysis, syntax analysis, and semantic analysis boxes equate to computing objects)
using the cluster of stateful processes to perform a computing operation (“The execution path indicates a plurality of microservice components that are to be executed sequentially. The job manager is configured to: receive a query submitted by a client; invoke the plurality of microservice components in response to the query based on the execution path determined by the component manager, to process the query to obtain a query result; and return the processing result to the client. 0008 ; see figure 8- steps S6 and S7 ; “each microservice component is configured to implement a subfunction of a database management system”, 0023 ; Examiner Note: a plurality of microservice components equates to a cluster of stateful processes. Each of the microservices work together as subfunctions of an overall function - receiving and sending data between each other in order to process a query, equating to performing a computing operation )
Li discloses the above limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose the configuration of the compute instances being performed by a management system.
However, A discloses:
each of the stateful processes includes at least one computing object that is configured at least in part by a management system (“In this way, the CCM (centralized configuration management system) may provide model driven configuration management for microservices and/or an NMS of a network. The CCM may configure the microservices without interacting with a network administrator (e.g., via a client device)”, 0014)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the microservice application system of Li with the centralized configuration management system of A, in order to improve the performance of the network relative to using a manual process to configure the microservices (A, [0014]).
Li in view of A discloses the above limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose a compute object subscribing to stateful processes.
However, Goel discloses:
interface with other stateful processes in the cluster by at least subscribing to one or more of the other stateful processes (“IP address provider microservice 400 may expose APIs to the SMF or PDU session NF service instances in the SMF. These APIs include allocate IP (DNN, and IP address type (IPv4 or IPv6)), release IP, and subscribe for notifications. Thus, rather than requiring the SMF to maintain the lease expiration timers for IP addresses for each PDU session, all the SMF is required to do is request an IP address from IP address provider microservice 400, subscribe for notifications relating to the IP address, and notify IP address provider microservice 400 when a PDU session terminates.”, 0065 ; “IP address provider microservice 400 may provide a representational state transfer (REST)-based subscription mechanism to notify the SMF or PDU session NF service of an IP address exhaustion threshold being reached per DNN and also of DHCP server availability.”, 0055 ; Examiner Note: A microservice with a state which is tracked equates to a stateful process.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the microservice application system of Li with the subscribing to stateful processes, or microservices, of Goel, in order to provide the system with the ability to track the state processes- thereby allowing the system to maintain performance metrics and identify where any faults might be occurring within the stateful process flow, in order to correct them and obtain improved overall throughput. Li in view of A in view of Goel fully discloses the above limitations of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose a stateful process outputting data to another stateful process.
However, Bonas discloses:
subscribing to one or more of the other stateful processes and by outputting data to one or more of the other stateful processes (“Dependencies may be identified by the resource allocation manager 202 based on whether a given microservice sends or receives data from another microservice”, 0022 ; Examiner Note: a microservice which is dependent upon another equates to a microservice which is subscribed to the microservice it depends upon)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the microservice application system of Li, the centralized configuration management system of A, and the subscribing to stateful processes, or microservices, of Goel with the outputting of data from one stateful process to another stateful process, in order to provide the system with a means for sending data between stateful processes, as well as a means for detecting and removing unused microservices, thus avoiding associated coding errors (Bonas, [0009-0010]).
As per claim 2, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the claim limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Li discloses:
outputting data from the computing operation to one or more of a database, a widget, and an application. (“process the query to obtain a query result; and return the processing result to the client.”, 0008 ; "Step S8: The executor service 280 returns a query result to the job manager 220.”, 0107 ; Examiner Note: the job manager is an application.)
As per claim 4, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Li discloses:
processing the computing object to generate the stateful processes by generating a virtual machine including the computing object. (“one microservice component may be deployed on one virtual machine or container, or a plurality of microservice components may be deployed on a same virtual machine or container.” 0018 ; “The job manager is configured to: receive a query submitted by a client; invoke the plurality of microservice components in response to the query based on the execution path determined by the component manager”, 0008 ; Examiner Note: invoking the components based on the determined execution path equates to processing computing objects, deploying on a virtual machine corresponds to generating a virtual machine.)
As per claim 5, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 4.
Furthermore, Li discloses:
processing the computing objects to generate the stateful process further includes provisioning the stateful process with services to interface with at least one of the stateful processes in the cluster (“(b) Component enabling and disabling: When the system is started, the component manager 230 enables service components” 0078 ; ”The message communication service 240 provides a low-latency and high-bandwidth communication capability, and may be used for communication between microservice components.”, 0076 ; Examiner Note: the message communication service (240) equates to a service to interface stateful processes. The message communication service is one of the service components which is enabled at start-up. )
As per claim 8, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Li discloses:
the computing object comprises one or more of a machine learning model, an artificial intelligence model, a function, a dataset, a data stream, a simulation, business logic, and an integration. (“each microservice component is configured to implement a subfunction of a database management system”, 0008 ; “In a possible implementation, the plurality of microservice components include a parser and optimizer combination service, an executor service, and a storage engine service.”, 0013 ; Examiner Note: the various microservices listed each equate to services, and are integrated to perform the function of database management. )
As per claim 14, it is a system claim whose limitations are substantially the same as those of claim 1. Accordingly, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 19, it is a system claim whose limitations are substantially the same as those of claim 8. Accordingly, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 20, it is a system claim whose limitations are substantially the same as those of claim 1. Accordingly, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 3 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et. al. (US 20220067044 A1) in view of A (US 20210328863 A1) in view of Goel (US 20220200951 A1) in further view of Bonas (US 10938691 B1) in further view of Karri et. al. (US 11995422 B2).
As per claim 3, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose a three-layer computing environment.
Karri discloses:
the steps of the process are performed in a three-layer computing environment including a physical computer network layer, an overlay network layer, and a subscription network layer; and the stateful processes interfaces with one another using the overlay network layer. (“The microservice architecture 100 can comprise a number of layers including an API layer 110, an integration layer 120, a services layer 130, and a storage layer 140.”, col. 2, lines 5-8 ; see figure 1- block 140, 120, and 110 ; “The integration layer 120 provides the capability required by different services and microservices within the architecture 100 to interact with one another.”, col.2, lines 20-22 ; “ A client application 150 typically interacts with the architecture 100 using APIs exposed by microservices 160 within the API layer 110.”, col.2, lines 8-9 ; Examiner Note: the storage layer (140) equates to a physical computer network layer, the integration layer (120) equates to an overlay network layer, and the API layer (110) equates to a subscription network layer. )
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the microservice application system of Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas with the computing layers of Karri, in order to provide the system of Li with a separate framework for communication between both processes within the application, and between the user and the application network- thereby, increasing the accessibility and inter-process connectivity of the system.
As per claim 7, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose the use of an API to enable communication between processes.
However, Karri discloses:
the stateful processes are configured to interface with one another using one or more of application programming interfaces and software development kits. (“Additionally, microservices can communicate with one another over a combination of REST APIs”, col.1, lines 31-35 ; Examiner Note: microservices equate to stateful processes.)
Claims 6 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et. al. (US 20220067044 A1) in view of A (US 20210328863 A1) in view of Goel (US 20220200951 A1) in further view of Bonas (US 10938691 B1) in further view of Ago et. al. (US 11768811 B1).
As per claim 6, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 5, but does not explicitly disclose the containerization of computing objects to generate stateful processes.
Furthermore, Ago discloses:
processing the computing object to generate the stateful processes by containerizing the computing object to generate the stateful processes. (“One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a computer-implemented method, including containerizing plural instances of a single-tenant software application to generate a set of containerized microservices”, col.2, lines 23-29 ; Examiner Note: a single-tenant software application equates to a computing object, and a set of microservices equates to stateful processes)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the microservice system of Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas with the containerization of applications of Ago (col.2, lines 23-29) in order to provide a system capable of leveraging the advantages of containerization- such as increased flexibility and granularity, as well as increased speed and efficiency (from sharing the host OS kernel)- in the context of a microservice application environment.
As per claim 15, it is a system claim whose limitations are substantially the same as those of claims 4 and 6. Accordingly, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et. al. (US 20220067044 A1) in view of A (US 20210328863 A1) in view of Goel (US 20220200951 A1) in further view of Bonas (US 10938691 B1) in further view of Price et. al. (US 20230055088 A1).
As per claim 9, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose the arrangement of stateful processes in a directed graph structure.
However, Price discloses:
the cluster of stateful processes includes an arrangement of the stateful processes in a directed graph structure. (“The number of processor units creates a directed graph structure … wherein the directed graph structure includes relationships between the applications, the number of common code components, and the issues identified”, 0004 ; Examiner Note: an application equates to a stateful process)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine microservice management system of Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas with the directed graph structure of Price (0004) in order to provide the user with a graphical representation of the entire application which they are running, thereby improving user experience, leading to increased profitability.
Claims 10-11 and 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et. al. (US 20220067044 A1) in view of A (US 20210328863 A1) in view of Goel (US 20220200951 A1) in further view of Bonas (US 10938691 B1) in further view of Kairali et. al. (US 20240195787 A1).
As per claim 10, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose the output of a first stateful process providing an input to a second stateful process.
However, Kairali discloses:
assembling the plurality of stateful processes in the cluster includes interfacing a first stateful process with a second stateful process so an output of the first stateful process provides an input to the second stateful process (“Different microservices communicate with each other through one or more lightweight protocols to exchange information, allowing multiple microservices to be used to complete an action or a transaction. For example, an output of a microservice is input to another microservice.”, 0029 ; Examiner Note: a microservice equates to a stateful process)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the system of Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas with the microservice outputs being used as inputs to other microservices of Kairali in order to provide a system which may flexibly rely on multiple stages of data processing to accomplish a computing task.
As per claim 11, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose the output of a first and second stateful process providing an input to a third stateful process.
Furthermore, Kairali discloses:
assembling the plurality of stateful processes in the cluster includes interfacing a first stateful process, a second stateful process, and a third stateful process so an output of the first stateful process and an output of the second stateful process provide an input to the third stateful process. (For example, an output of a microservice is input to another microservice.”, 0029 ; see fig. 3-block 205, 215, and 225- Security implementation module (225) receives output from User Store module (205) and Data Timing Module (215) as input. ; Examiner Note: the modules of Fig. 3 are each microservices of the application. Each microservice equates to a stateful process.)
As per claim 16, it is a system claim whose limitations are substantially the same as those of claims 5 and 10. Accordingly, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 17, it is a method claim whose limitations are substantially the same as those of claim 11. Accordingly, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 12 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et. al. (US 20220067044 A1) in view of A (US 20210328863 A1) in view of Goel (US 20220200951 A1) in further view of Bonas (US 10938691 B1) in further view of Nair et. al. (US 20220046084 A1).
As per claim 12, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose the use of meta clusters to perform computing operations.
However, Nair discloses:
assembling the cluster and at least one other cluster into a meta cluster of clusters; and using the meta cluster of clusters to perform the computing operation. (“although FIG. 1 depicts the application environment 100 as including clusters 110(1),110(2), 110(3), 110(4), 110(5), 110(6), 110(7), 110(8), . . . , it should be understood that the application environment 100 may include hundreds or even thousands of clusters 110 such as in the context of an application 102 that uses a microservices architecture”, 0058 ; “The clusters 110 provide different application services to support operation of one or more applications 102 utilized by the user devices 102”, 0057 ; Examiner Note: providing an application service equates to performing a computing operation)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the system of Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas with the meta clusters of Nair in order to provide increased functionality to the microservice/stateful process application- thereby increasing the marketability, and profitability, of the system.
As per claim 18, it is a system claim whose limitations are substantially the same as those of claim 12. Accordingly, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et. al. (US 20220067044 A1) in view of A (US 20210328863 A1) in view of Goel (US 20220200951 A1) in further view of Bonas (US 10938691 B1) in further view of Iqbal et. al. (US 11782767 B2).
As per claim 13, Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose a graphical user interface for arranging applications.
However, Iqbal discloses:
the assembling step is performed at least in part in a graphical user interface. (A user may interact with the cloud computing system using a console user interface (UI) (which may be a graphical user interface (GUI)) of an application executed by the computing device or via API operations provided by the distributed computing system 110. For instance, the user may interact with the distributed computing system 110 to create one or more computing clusters, access or interact with a microservices-based application, store data related to the application, and retrieve data related to one or more requests.”, col.10, lines 44-52 ; Examiner Note: creating a cluster of microservices equates to assembling a group of stateful processes)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the system of Li in view of A in further view of Goel in further view of Bonas with the graphical user interface of Iqbal in order to provide the user with a convenient means for assembling an application composed of individual microservices.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Zhou et. al. (US 11829777 B2)- discloses a method for managing microservices. Configures a set of namespaces using first permissions and configuration info, then installs assemblies using a second set of permissions.
Desai (US 11861406 B2)- discloses a computing platform comprising a plurality of disaggregated data center resources and an infrastructure processing units (IPU). IPUs are communicatively coupled to the plurality of resources, to compose a platform of the plurality of disaggregated data center resources for allocation of microservices cluster.
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/R.M.V./
Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196