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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 11/21/2025 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
This Office Action has been issued in response to the amendment filed on 11/21/2025. Claims 1-21 are pending. Applicants’ arguments have been carefully and respectfully considered in light of the instant amendment and are not persuasive, as they relate to the claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103, as will be discussed below. Accordingly, this action has been made NON-FINAL.
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.
Claim(s) 1-21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deokule et al (US 11429397 B1) in view of Das et al (US 11941014 B1).
As to claims 1, 8, and 15, Deokule teaches a database system comprising:
a primary compute cluster including a processor and a non-transitory storage medium containing instructions executable on said processor for executing a database management system (DBMS) (Deokule discloses one or more computing clusters (e.g. 122 and 124), the first (e.g. 122) being the primary cluster in Figure 1 and column 8, lines 52-60. Deokule further discloses that the computing clusters comprise one or more computing nodes, which comprise both a processor and non-transitory storage medium in Figure 1, column 5, lines 4-24, and column 11, lines 27-36.);
at least one additional compute cluster (Deokule discloses creating additional computing clusters (e.g. 124) in Figure 1. Deokule discloses different computing clusters associated with different tenants in a cloud computing system in column 5, line 41 through column 6, line 6.);
multiple data storage systems providing different kinds of file organization, different kinds of data organization, and different forms of storage access, said primary and additional compute clusters having access to said multiple data storage (Deokule discloses a cloud computing system which different kinds of file organization, different kinds of data organization, and different forms of storage access. See column 1, lines 6-21 and column 3, lines 50-65. Deokule also discloses the storage systems include an object storage system 156 and a block volume storage system 158. The object storage system 156 and block volume storage system 158 represent different storage tiers (or storage layers) for storing and caching data that is used, analyzed, and processed by the different computing clusters associated with the different tenants of the cloud computing system. See column 6, lines 38-44.); and
a warehouse cache containing transformed versions of data read from a first one of said multiple data storage systems to a second one of said multiple data storage systems during query executions by said compute clusters, said transformed versions of data stored within said warehouse cache being available for use in subsequent query executions by said compute clusters (Deokule discloses computing clusters include a cache for storing data required for query execution. These computing clusters are organized in a somewhat hierarchical manner (e.g. cache tiers). The first computing cluster is designated as the primary and an additional cluster is created in response to “failovers”. The additional computing cluster(s) (e.g. target cluster) contain a cache and the cache is bootstrapped off of the primary cluster cache (i.e. transformed versions). Thus the target computing cluster contains a version of data within its cache. The target cache(s) is/are available for use in query execution. See column 8, line 36 through column 9, line 5, column 9, line 53 through column 10, line 12), and said transformed versions are physically distinct from one another (Deokule in Figure 2 discloses a computing cluster comprising computing nodes 1-3. The cache memory 138 of the computing node may represent a replicated segment cache (i.e. transformed version). A replicated segment cache may refer to a clustered, fault tolerant cache in a computing cluster where segments are fully replicated to all nodes within the cluster. This clearly suggests the replication of data (i.e. transformed versions) across multiple nodes. Each replicated segment cache is a version of the original data and they are stored in separate nodes making them physically distinct from one another. See column 9, lines 6-52.).
Deokule fails to teach transformed versions of data concurrently stored.
However, Das teaches transformed versions of data concurrently stored (Das discloses apply the metadata updates to metadata storage resources (such as a cache and/or a persistent data store) to store a new metadata version associated with the new version number. Different versions of the metadata may be stored concurrently using various metadata storage resources. See column 3, line 57 through column 4, line 12).
Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to modify the teachings of Deoklue to incorporate the Versioned Metadata Management For A Time-series Database as taught by Das for the purpose of allowing customers to write queries in a consistent manner, regardless of the differences between storage tiers in which their data is stored.
As to claims 2, 9, and 16, Deokule teaches wherein said multiple data storage systems include an external cloud object storage and at least one of: a managed cloud storage; a block storage; and a database compute node memory (Deokule discloses cloud computing, block storage, computing nodes in column 6, line 34 through column 7, line 3.).
As to claim 3, 10, and 17, Deokule teaches wherein said transformed versions of data include at least one of: managed data within said managed cloud storage; data read from said external cloud object storage, transformed, and saved to said block storage; data read from said managed cloud object storage, transformed, and saved to said block storage; data read from said external cloud object storage, transformed, and saved to said database compute node memory; data read from said managed cloud object storage, transformed, and saved to said database compute node memory; and data read from said block storage, transformed, and saved to said database compute node memory (Deokule discloses computing nodes which interact with the external sources to read and write data to the external object and block storage systems of the cloud system. See column 6, line 34 through column 7, line 3 and column 9, lines 6-34.).
As to claim 4, 11, and 18, Deokule teaches wherein said transformed versions of data saved to said warehouse cache include metadata associated with said transformed versions of data (Deokule discloses the computing cluster 122 may implement a cache metadata and replication service 208. The cache metadata and replication service 208 includes capabilities to ensure that the data segments 232 being utilized by the computing node 136 for query execution are replicated across the other nodes (e.g., 138, 140) within the computing cluster 122. See column 9, lines 36-41 and column 10, lines 13-59.).
As to claim 5, 12, and 19, Deokule teaches wherein said transformed versions of data saved to said warehouse cache include index data associated with said transformed versions of data (Deokule discloses breaking up data into blocks and then stores those blocks as separate pieces, each with a unique identifier in column 6, lines 54-55.).
As to claim 6, 13, and 20, Deokule teaches wherein said warehouse cache comprises multiple caches wherein said transformed versions of data are distributed among different ones of said multiple data storage systems (Deokule discloses a computing node 136 may be implemented using a set of one or more cache memory tiers 200. Each cache tier may be designed to speed up access to data segments stored on a corresponding storage tier and each cache tier may be configured to provide different storage levels to persist/cache segments for a particular storage tier (storage system) that is mapped to the cache tier. See column 9, lines 53-60.).
As to claim 7, 14, and 21, Deokule teaches wherein said multiple caches are organized in a cache hierarchy that can store multiple synchronized transformed versions of data (Deokule discloses a computing node 136 may be implemented using a set of one or more cache memory tiers 200. Each cache tier may be designed to speed up access to data segments stored on a corresponding storage tier and each cache tier may be configured to provide different storage levels to persist/cache segments for a particular storage tier (storage system) that is mapped to the cache tier. See column 9, line 53 through column 10, line 12.).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11/21/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant should submit an argument under the heading “Remarks” pointing out disagreements with the examiner’s contentions. Applicant must also discuss the references applied against the claims, explaining how the claims avoid the references or distinguish from them.
Specifically, Applicant merely argues that the prior art fails to teach “said transformed versions are physically distinct from one another”, as recited in claims 1, 8, and 15. There is no discussion of the references applied against the claims, explaining how the claims avoid the references or distinguish from them.
As outlined above, Examiner finds the prior art reference of Deokule et al (US 11429397 B1) to teach “said transformed versions are physically distinct from one another”, and thus the rejection is maintained.
Deokule in Figure 2 discloses a computing cluster comprising computing nodes 1-3. The cache memory 138 of the computing node may represent a replicated segment cache (i.e. transformed version). A replicated segment cache may refer to a clustered, fault tolerant cache in a computing cluster where segments are fully replicated to all nodes within the cluster. This clearly suggests the replication of data (i.e. transformed versions) across multiple nodes. Each replicated segment cache is a version of the original data and they are stored in separate nodes making them physically distinct from one another. See column 9, lines 6-52.
Claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-21 depend from claims 1, 8, and 15 and therefore the rejections are also maintained.
Conclusion
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/JARED M BIBBEE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2161