DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This action is in response to the 6/1/26 amendment and request for reconsideration. Claims 1, 3, 4, 6-11, 13, 14, and 16-20 are pending. Claims 1, 3, 4, 6-9, 11, 13, 14, and 16-19 have been amended.
Claim Interpretation
For claim interpretation the examiner has relied on applicants’ disclosure including the following paragraphs.
Background/Summary
[0008] The electronic device and the operation method thereof according to one or more embodiments may prevent the performance of the checkpoint from being delayed or failing, thus preventing the size of a WAL file from continuing to increase.
Description
[0095] In an embodiment, when the size of the WAL file 350 is greater than a first threshold size (e.g., 1 gigabyte (GB), the thread 305 may increase a time to perform an attempt to obtain a lock. In an embodiment, when the size of the WAL file 350 is greater than the first threshold size, the thread 305 may increase the time to perform the attempt to obtain the lock by a reference time (e.g., 100 msec).
[0098] In an embodiment, when the checkpoint fails and when the size of the WAL file 350 is greater than a second threshold size (e.g., 100 MB), the thread 305 may increase the number of the failures of the checkpoint.
[0123] Referring to FIG. 8, in operation 810, a processor 120 may determine whether the size of a WAL file 350 is greater than a first threshold size (e.g., 1 GB). In an embodiment, the first threshold size may be adaptively set according to a capacity of a memory 130.
[0124] When the size of the WAL file 350 is greater than the first threshold size (e.g., 1 GB) in operation 810 (“YES”), the processor 120 may perform operation 820. When the size of the WAL file 350 is not greater than the first threshold size (e.g., 1 GB) in operation 810 (“NO”), the processor 120 may perform the operations according to FIG. 8.
[0130] In operation 920, the processor 120 may determine whether the size of the WAL file 350 is greater than a second threshold size (e.g., 100 MB). In an embodiment, the second threshold size may be adaptively set according to the capacity of the memory 130.
[0131] When the size of the WAL file 350 is greater than the second threshold size (e.g., 100 MB) in operation 920 (“YES”), the processor 120 may perform operation 930. When the size of the WAL file 350 is not greater than the second threshold size (e.g., 100 MB) in operation 920 (“NO”), the processor 120 may end the operations according to FIG. 9.
[0174] In an embodiment, the instructions may be configured to, when executed by the processor 120, cause the electronic device 101 to increase the reference time by the set time, in response to failure of the attempt to perform the lock for the journal file during the reference time and a size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a first reference size.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 3-4, 6-11, 13-14, and 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Pound et al. (US Patent No. 9,990,392 B2, hereinafter "Pound") in view of Bhattacharjee (U S Patent No. 9,652169 issued to Bhattacharjee, hereinafter “Bhattacharjee.”
With respect to claim 1,
Pound teaches an electronic device comprising:
a memory storing a database, a journal file (“distributed log 118,” see Pound col. 4, lines 25-67) and instructions; and a processor electrically connected with the memory, wherein the instructions are configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to:
record a result of processing a transaction in the journal, obtain a lock for the database during a time (“period of time,” see Pound, col. 3, lines 9-20) in response to a size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a threshold; (“threshold may indicate, for example, a period of time or number of transactions, see Pound, col. 3, lines 9-20) and
transfer the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file to the database when the lock for the database is obtained during the reference time ((“threshold may indicate, for example, a period of time or number of transactions, see Pound, col. 3, lines 9-20) ; and,
wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to, when the lock for the database is not obtained during the reference time:
increase failures increase the reference time by a set time, (“Sequencer 122 may be a counter, such as an atomic counter, that increments or otherwise adjusts its count each time a sequence number is produced” col. 4, line 52-67) based on the size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a threshold size greater than the first threshold size and the increased failures being greater than or equal to a reference failure number;
obtain the lock for the database during the increased reference time (Pound, col. 4, line 25-67); and
transfer the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file to the database (Once a write transaction has completed, the node may update distributed log 118. The update to distributed log 118 may indicate that the write transaction has been committed to storage cluster 104 and the mapping as to which storage nodes 120 contain the data, Pound, col. 5, line 60-64), when the lock for the database is obtained during the increased reference time.
With reference to claim 1, Examiner notes that Applicants’ disclosure, [0174], states that “(i)n an embodiment, the instructions may be configured to, when executed by the processor 120, cause the electronic device 101 to increase the reference time by the set time, in response to failure of the attempt to perform the lock for the journal file during the reference time and a size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a first reference size…” In other words, the invention in the amended claim 1 is directed to increasing the reference time by a set time when a lock cannot be obtained due to failure to commit the write transactions, however, the invention allows for extending the time to commit by controlling the size of the journal log. The “second threshold” is therefore interpreted as to how many more failure can be allowed to commit the writes and keeping the size of journal within a reasonable limit (i.e., “when the lock for the database is not obtained during the reference time: increase a number of failures increase the reference time by a set time, based on the size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a second threshold size greater than the first threshold size and the increased number of the failures being greater than or equal to a reference failure number; obtain the lock for the database during the increased reference time;”
With respect to claim 1, Pound does not explicitly teach “a first threshold size,” “a second threshold size,” and the “number of failures” to be increased with respect to increasing the “reference time” by a set time. Pound does not explicitly teach increasing the reference time to allow completion of write transaction, while keeping the size of the WAL file in check.
Pound, however, teaches adjusting the counter wherever a “sequence number” associated with a write lock is entered. (“Sequencer 122 may be a counter, such as an atomic counter, that increments or otherwise adjusts its count each time a sequence number is produced” col. 4, line 52-67) based on the size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a second threshold size greater than the first threshold size and the increased number of the failures being greater than or equal to a reference failure number;
Pound, in col. 1, line 57-62, teaches the storage requirements without specifying “size.” In other words, Pound does not explicitly indicate increasing the time by a set time to allow the write operations to be completed.
Bhattacharjee teaches a transaction processing system that collects statistics on transaction failures and successes (Bhattacharjee Fig. 3, 308, 310, 312, 316). Bhattacharjee also teaches collecting statistics on attempts/reattempts made to complete/commit write transactions (Fig. 7, 704). See also, Bhattacharjee col. 4, line 65 – col. 5, line 8. Bhattacharjee specifically teaches a “predetermined threshold” to measure the completion of writes (col. 6, lines 13-43, and enables the transaction system to acquire write lock.
Bhattacharjee clearly teaches the acquiring of locks by adaptively resolving the (write) attempts/reattempts. See Bhattacharjee col. 5, lines 27-31, teaches “410: the size of the transaction, the memory footprint of the transaction; 412: the size of the accessed shared resources; and 414: a reattempt success rate for the previous k transactions, where k is an integer.”
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of Bhattacharjee in Pound because Bhattacharjee suggests that a “transaction that is going to use a lot of memory will be aborted anyway due to the limit of transactional memory, so it is more efficient to directly use the locking mechanism rather than wasting time on unsuccessful commits.” See col. 3, lines 25-29, “adaptively determined… ” and also that Bhattacharjee in Fig. 4, 408, and col. 5, lines 21-26, teaches, “408: the depth of the transaction (e.g., the number of operations), because as the depth of transaction increases, the likelihood of conflict also increases. For example, as the number of operations within a transaction increases, the likelihood that the HTM optimistic approach fails increases, and the number of re-attempts could be decreased; col 12, claim 10, teasches, “(t)he method of claim 9, wherein the number of reattempts adaptively decreases as the number of operations associated with the given request increases.” Adaptively determining the rate of reattempts makes the overall system of Pound-Bhattacharjee more efficient. See Bhattacharjee col. 3, line 25-29, “(a) transaction that is going to use a lot of memory will be aborted anyway due to the limit of transactional memory, so it is more efficient to directly use the locking mechanism rather than wasting time on unsuccessful commits.”
As to the suggestion and motivation to combine Pound and Bhattacharjee reference is made to col 4, ln 8-29 of Bhatt: “FIGS. 2A and 2B show collected runtime-statistics in a given window according to an embodiment of the invention. Collection of runtime-statistics is described below in the context of FIG. 3. As shown, FIG. 2A depicts runtime-statistics of the frequency of success/failure in given time windows 202A and 202B. A given time window may have one or more failed reattempts, represented by box 204A-1 . . . 204A-N and 204B-1 . . . 204B-N, and one or more successful reattempts, represented by 206A-1 . . . 206A-M and 206B-1 . . . 206B-M, where N and M are integers. In the instance where there are more failed reattempts (e.g., the ratio of failure is greater than the ratio of success, or where N is greater than M), as shown in time window 202A, embodiments of the invention would seek to decrease the reattempt rate. In contrast, time window 202B shows the instance where there are more successful reattempts (e.g., the ratio of success is greater than the ratio of failure, or where M is greater than or equal to N), embodiments of the invention seek to increase the reattempt rate. Thus allowing for an adaptive mechanism to dynamically adjust the reattempt rate based on collected runtime statistics. The meaning of “reattempt rate” is the number reattempts made in a predetermined period of time, and thereby , and Bhattacharjee Col 4, ln 45-49, “FIG. 3 shows a runtime-statistics collection process 300, according to an embodiment of the invention. At step 302, a time window size is selected for statistics collection. The time window itself may be adjusted and tuned based on the effectiveness of and expected fluctuation in the workloads. This adjustment may be performed manually by a user or automatically by a program based on a pre-defined criteria or threshold, and Bhattacharjee col. 6, line 13-34, “FIG. 7 shows factors that can lead to the program/thread entering locking mode (step 702) at step 508 in FIG. 5. These factors include, but are not limited to: 704 Locking mode: if a pre-defined number of reattempts has been exceeded; 706 Locking mode: if the workload tends to be mostly-write, based on read/write statistics collected, i.e., workload exceeds a pre-determined threshold of writes, for example, one or more individual transactions consist of 80% or 90% read accesses; 708 Locking mode: if most transaction have failed by relying on hardware traditional memory, i.e., workload exceeds a pre-determined threshold of failures in HTM mode; 710 Locking mode: if the transaction is mostly write-only and depth of transaction is long (the transaction consists of many operations); and 712 Locking mode: if the transaction is likely to read large amount of data, i.e., the size of the data that is being accessed is larger than the size of the available transactional memory, for example, the amount of data to be read exceeds one megabyte of data.”
With respect to claim 3 (the electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to: identify the size of the journal filewhen the lock for the database is not obtained during the reference time; and increase the failures, based on the identified size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a third threshold size greater than the first threshold size and less than the second threshold size), see BHATTACHARJEE col. 6, lines 33-34.
“FIG. 7 shows factors that can lead to the program/thread entering locking mode (step 702) at step 508 in FIG. 5. These factors include, but are not limited to: 704 Locking mode: if a pre-defined number of reattempts has been exceeded; 706 Locking mode: if the workload tends to be mostly-write, based on read/write statistics collected, i.e., workload exceeds a pre-determined threshold of writes, for example, one or more individual transactions consist of 80% or 90% read accesses; 708 Locking mode: if most transaction have failed by relying on hardware traditional memory, i.e., workload exceeds a pre-determined threshold of failures in HTM mode; 710 Locking mode: if the transaction is mostly write-only and depth of transaction is long (the transaction consists of many operations); and 712 Locking mode: if the transaction is likely to read large amount of data, i.e., the size of the data that is being accessed is larger than the size of the available transactional memory, for example, the amount of data to be read exceeds one megabyte of data.”
With respect to claim 4. (Currently Amended) The electronic device of claim 3, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to initialize the reference time, based on a transfer of the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file to the database, see Pound, distributed log 118,” see Pound col. 4, lines 25-67)
With respect to claim 6 (the electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to: identify whether there is another transaction other than the transaction; and obtain the lock for the database during the reference time, based on the identification of whether there is another transaction other than the transaction, see Fig. 4 of Bhatt. Bhattacharjee does not limit the number of transactions when collecting its statistics and
With respect to claim 7 (the electronic device of claim 6, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to transfer the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file to the database, such that he size of the journal file is less than or equal to a specified size, Bhattacharjee in col.6, lines 33-34, teaches a size for the journal log, the size of the data that is being accessed is larger than the size of the available transactional memory, for example, the amount of data to be read exceeds one megabyte of data.”
With respect to claim 8. (Currently Amended) The electronic device of claim 6, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to: obtain the lock for the database during the reference time through a first thread of a process associated with the database; and obtain the lock for the database during the increased reference time through a second thread distinguished from the first thread, Bhattacharjee teaches concurrency control involving multiple thread, see Bhattacharjee col. Line 35-55, that “ …concurrency control utilizes a locking mechanism (one or more locks) to guarantee that threads have exclusive access to shared data for a critical section of code execution. Typically, a thread acquires the lock, executes its critical section of code, and releases the lock. This approach is considered a pessimistic concurrency control approach.”
With respect to claim 9 (the electronic device of claim 8, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to: transfer the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file to the database through the second threadwhen the lock for the database is obtained; and release the lock for the database through the second thread in response to transferring the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file to the database) see Bhattacharjee col. Line 35-55.
With respect to claim 10, (the electronic device of claim 1, wherein the transaction is a write transaction,) see Pound, col. 1, lines 64-67.
Claim 11 is essentially the same as claim 1 except that the invention in claim 11 is directed to a method implemented in the device of claim 1, and is rejected under the same rationale applied to claim 1 above.
Claim 11. (Currently Amended) A method of an electronic device, the method comprising: recording a result of processing a transaction in a journal file for a database of the electronic deviceobtaining a lock for the database during a reference timein response to a size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a first threshold size, and transferring the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file, to the database hen the lock for the database is obtained during the reference time; when the lock for the database is not obtained during the reference time:increasing a number of failures; and increasing the reference time by a set time, based on the size of the journal file being greater than or equal to a second threshold size greater than the first threshold size and the increased number of the failures eing greater than or equal to a reference failureumber; obtaining the lock for the database during the increased reference time; and transferring the result of processing the transaction recorded in the journal file to the database, when the lock for the database is obtained during the increased reference time.
Claims 13-14, 16-20 are essentially the same as claims 3-4, 6-10 except that the invention in these claims is directed to a method implemented in the device of claims 1, 3-4, 6-10 and are rejected under the same rationale applied to claims 1, 3-4, and 6-10 above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to Claims 1, 3-4, 6-11, 13-14, and 16-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on the same combination of references used in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Applicants amended claims are directed to an electronic device that increases the time to commit and/or complete the write operations by increasing the number of write commit failures and also limiting the time to commit and/or abort, and the amended claim recites a first and a second threshold that allow for increasing failures and regulating the size of the journal by introducing variable increments. This change to the claims have been addressed by introducing the secondary reference Bhattacharjee.
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.
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/HOSAIN T ALAM/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2132
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