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 .
Remarks
This action is in response to the amendments received on 10/6/25. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application. Applicants' arguments have been carefully and respectfully considered.
Claim(s) 1-9 and 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over J. Arai, H. Shiokawa, T. Yamamuro, M. Onizuka and S. Iwamura, "Rabbit Order: Just-in-Time Parallel Reordering for Fast Graph Analysis," 2016 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), Chicago, IL, USA, 2016, pp. 22-31, and further in view of Tishbi et al. (US 2024/0289464).
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aria in view of Tishbi, and further in view of Stetson et al. (US 2017/0221240).
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.
Claim(s) 1-9 and 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over J. Arai, H. Shiokawa, T. Yamamuro, M. Onizuka and S. Iwamura, "Rabbit Order: Just-in-Time Parallel Reordering for Fast Graph Analysis," 2016 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), Chicago, IL, USA, 2016, pp. 22-31, and further in view of Tishbi et al. (US 2024/0289464).
With respect to claim 1, Arai teaches a system comprising:
a reordering controller to: receive a graph having vertices …, the vertices including a first vertex and a second vertex …(Arai, pg. 3, B. Problem statement, Given graph G = (V = [0; n);E⫃ V x V); and
output an updated graph based on a merging of the first vertex and the second vertex into a merged vertex of a group of vertices (Arai, pg. 3, last paragraph, COMMUNITYDETECTION function, extracts hierarchical communities in an agglomerative manner and simultaneously constructs a dendrogram. & pg. 4 Fig 4a,b & section B, part 1, Figure 4 illustrates a running example of our approach to hierarchical community detection. Each vertex is picked as a source vertex and merged into a destination vertex, which is a neighbor of the source vertex.); and
renumber the first vertex and the second vertex in the graph to be sequential based on the updated graph (Arai, pg. 6, section C, After the community detection, Rabbit Order generates an ordering by following hierarchical community-based ordering. Here, we present a sequential algorithm for generating an ordering and its parallel equivalent. 1) Sequential Algorithm: The ORDERINGGENERATION function in Algorithm 2 generates new orderings.)
output an updated graph based on a merging of the first vertex and the second vertex into a merged vertex of a group of vertices (Arai, pg. 4 section B part 1, Figure 4(b) shows the dendrogram constructed by the incremental aggregation shown in Figure 4(a). Merged destination vertices form a tree by aggregating the inner communities.) based on the first vertex and the second vertex being associated with [data] common to the first vertex and the second vertex (Arai, pg. 1 second column, Reordering is a technique that optimizes both the computation order and the data layouts by modifying the vertex ordering. Figure 1(b) shows an example of a reordered graph. In this graph, neighboring vertices have close ID numbers, and so they will be computed consecutively and co-located in memory).
Arai doesn't expressly discuss a graph having vertices corresponding to a plurality of graph objects to be interacted with by one or more users, the vertices including a first vertex and a second vertex and being associated with access control metadata indicating access permissions of the one or more users to the plurality of graph objects.
receive a graph having vertices corresponding to a plurality of graph objects to be interacted with by one or more users (Tishbi, pa 0046, a resource is represented by a resource node 210. A resource is, for example, a physical machine, a virtual machine, a software container, a serverless function, a software application, a platform as a service, a software as a service, an infrastructure as a service, and the like), the vertices including a first vertex and a second vertex (Tishbi, Fig. 2, vertices) and being associated with access control metadata indicating access permissions of the one or more users to the plurality of graph objects (Tishbi, pa 0047, a vertex connecting a resource node 210 to a principal node 220 indicates, according to an embodiment, that the principal represented by the principal node 220 can access the resource represented by the resource node 210. In an embodiment, the principal node 220 represents a principal, such as a user account, a service account, a role, and the like.)
a storage to store a single copy of the access control metadata for the first vertex and the second vertex, the single copy of the access control metadata indicating that a plurality of users has a same plurality of access permissions to a first graph object corresponding to the first vertex and to a second graph object corresponding to the second vertex. (Tishbi, pa 0064, the uber node is generated based on a determination that the first entity from the first source and the second entity from the second source are a single entity on which data is received from both the first source and the second source … a match is performed between a predefined data field, a plurality of predefined data fields, and the like, to determine, for example by generating a comparison, if a value of a data field of the first entity matches a value of a corresponding data field of the second entity (e.g., same IP address, same MAC address, same unique identifier, etc.). Examiner note: the access control metadata is represented by the data fields of the first and second entity, resulting in storage of an uber node for the entity).
It would have been obvious at the effective filing date of the invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to have modified Arai with the teachings of Tishbi because it provides it generates a compact view of assets while allowing traceability of the data to each source (Tishbi, pa 0052).
With respect to claim 2, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 1, wherein: the output of the updated graph is further based on the reordering controller being configured to merge a third vertex and a fourth vertex of the vertices into a second merged vertex of a second group based on the third vertex and the fourth vertex being associated with second access control metadata common to the third vertex and the fourth vertex and based on the third vertex and the fourth vertex satisfying a reordering technique (Aria, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time. … (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves); and the storage is to store a single copy of the second access control metadata for the third vertex and the fourth vertex (Tishbi, pa 0064, the uber node is generated based on a determination that the first entity from the first source and the second entity from the second source are a single entity on which data is received from both the first source and the second source … a match is performed between a predefined data field, a plurality of predefined data fields, and the like, to determine, for example by generating a comparison, if a value of a data field of the first entity matches a value of a corresponding data field of the second entity (e.g., same IP address, same MAC address, same unique identifier, etc.). Examiner note: the access control metadata is represented by the data fields of the first and second entity, resulting in storage of an uber node for the entity).
With respect to claim 3, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 2, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: prevent the merged vertex from being merged with the second merged vertex based on the merged vertex and the second merged vertex failing to satisfy the reordering technique (Aria, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time. … (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 4, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 2,
wherein generation of the updated graph is based on the reordering controller being configured to: number vertices in the group of vertices sequentially; and number vertices in the second group sequentially continuing from a last vertex numbered in the group of vertices (Aria, pg. 3, section III, ORDERINGGENERATION function, converts the dendrogram into a new ordering such that, for every community hierarchy, vertices in the same community are co-located. & pg. 6 section C, After the community detection, Rabbit Order generates an ordering by following hierarchical community-based ordering. Here, we present a sequential algorithm for generating an ordering and its parallel equivalent. 1) Sequential Algorithm: The ORDERINGGENERATION function in Algorithm 2 generates new orderings. To recursively co-locate vertices in each hierarchical community, the algorithm performs depth-first search (DFS) from each top-level vertex on the dendrogram and returns the visit order).
With respect to claim 5, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 2, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: merge a fifth vertex of the vertices with the merged vertex of the group of vertices based the access control metadata being common to the fifth vertex and the merged vertex and based on the fifth vertex and the merged vertex satisfying the reordering technique (Aria, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time… (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 6, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 5, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: detect updated metadata that is an update to the access control metadata; and maintain the first vertex and the second vertex in the group of vertices based on the first vertex and the second vertex sharing the updated metadata (Aria, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time… (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 7, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 6, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: discard the fifth vertex from the group of vertices based on the updated metadata not applying to the fifth vertex (Aria, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time… (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 8, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 7, wherein the storage is further configured to: store a single copy of the updated metadata for the first vertex and the second vertex based on the first vertex and the second vertex sharing the updated metadata (Tishbi, pa 0064, the uber node is generated based on a determination that the first entity from the first source and the second entity from the second source are a single entity on which data is received from both the first source and the second source … a match is performed between a predefined data field, a plurality of predefined data fields, and the like, to determine, for example by generating a comparison, if a value of a data field of the first entity matches a value of a corresponding data field of the second entity (e.g., same IP address, same MAC address, same unique identifier, etc.). Examiner note: the access control metadata is represented by the data fields of the first and second entity, resulting in storage of an uber node for the entity); and store metadata of the fifth vertex separately from the updated metadata based on the updated metadata not applying to the fifth vertex (Examiner note: if there was no match, an uber node would not be generated).
With respect to claim 9, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 5, wherein: the first vertex is adjacent to the second vertex, the third vertex is adjacent to the fourth vertex, and the fifth vertex is adjacent to the merged vertex (Aria, pg. 4).
With respect to claim 11, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the reordering technique comprises satisfying a merging quality threshold that indicates a partition quality that maximizes denser inner-group edges and sparser intra-group edges for each group of vertices (Arai, pg. 4 section B, Modularity [18] is Q a quality measure that provides a higher value when a graph is partitioned better, namely, each community has denser inner-community edges and sparser intra-community edges … The COMMUNITYDETECTION function in Algorithm 2 is the specific procedure of our approach. It consists of three steps: (i) picking a source vertex (line 4), (ii) finding the best destination vertex in terms of modularity improvement (line 5), and (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves (lines 6–7).).
With respect to claims 12-16, the limitations are essentially the same as claims 1-5, and are rejected for the same reasons.
With respect to claims 17-20, the limitations are essentially the same as claims 1-5, and are rejected for the same reasons.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aria in view of Tishbi, and further in view of Stetson et al. (US 2017/0221240).
With respect to claim 10, Aria in view of Tishbi teaches the system of claim 2, as discussed above. Aria in view of Tishbi doesn't expressly discuss wherein the access control metadata indicates read write permissions in relation to one or more vertices of the group of vertices.
Stetson teaches wherein the access control metadata indicates read write permissions in relation to one or more vertices of the group of vertices (Stetson, pa 0099, The permission metadata can include a security mechanism (e.g. a password, a security token, a handshake protocol, and/or a message) for accessing some or all of the data associated with a node).
It would have been obvious at the effective filing date of the invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to have modified Arai in view of Tishbi to have included the teachings of Stetson because it allows a graph database to be visualized and explored while maintaining permission rules (Stetson, pa 0099 & 0102).
Response to Arguments
Rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103
Applicant seems to argue a newly amended limitation. Applicant’s amendment has rendered the previous rejection moot. Upon further consideration of the amendment, a new grounds of rejection is made in view of Tishbi et al. (US 2024/0289464).
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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/BRITTANY N ALLEN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2169