DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-20 are pending in the present application.
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 .
Drawings
The drawings were received on 12 January 2024. These drawings are acceptable.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because “a non-volatile storage”, which in the BRI of the term, can include transitory signals. The specification does not state that transition media is excluded from the embodiments. Hence, claims 15-20 are rejected under 35 USC 101.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1, 2, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et al. US Patent 10,684,787 B1 in view of Ravala et al. US Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0070245 A1.
Regarding claim 1, Li et al. teaches the following:
A method to optimize non-volatile storage by performing operations comprising [Note: column 3 lines 1-17, partitioning splitting method, thereby effectively saving CPU resources, IO resources, disk space resources, etc.; column 16 lines 26-60].:
splitting data in a first log-structured merge (LSM) tree structure into partitioned shards to reduce a number of layers for the data represented in the first LSM tree structure [note: column 4 lines 40-48 key-value format; column 14 lines 15-32, “partition splitting method” using the LSM tree structure ],
wherein each partitioned shard represents an independent LSM tree structure, thus providing scalability and flexibility for the data represented in the first LSM tree structure [note: column 14 lines 15-32 ];
splitting a respective one of the partitioned shards into at least a parent shard and a child shard when a volume of data therein reaches a threshold level [note: [note: column 15 lines 30-42, optional implementation data whose data volume does not exceed a predetermined value based on a predetermined splitting rule may be split (i.e. suggests a threshold may be implemented) ]; and
merging a respective one of the partitioned shards into an adjacent one of the partitioned shards when a volume of data of the respective one of the partitioned shards decreases to a volume less than the threshold level [note: [note: column 15 lines 25-29; also column 14 lines 15-32 “merging partition data” ].
Although Li et al. teach the invention as cited they do not explicitly teach a parent shard and a child shard. However, Ravala et al. teach the feature as follows [note: paragraph 0065, parent chard and child shard; also note use of thresholds paragraph 0080-0081 with respect to adjusting capacity (i.e. volume); paragraph 0077-0080 ]. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill at the time of the effective filing date to have combined the cited references since they are both directed toward optimized usage of resources; Ravala et al. further describes partitioning of shards process of a key-value format.
Claim 2: The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises directing new read and write requests to the child shard [note: Ravala et al., paragraph 0063, shard to write data ].
Regarding Claim 15, Li et al. teaches the following: A non-volatile storage having stored thereon executable components, comprising [Note: column 3 lines 1-17, partitioning splitting method, thereby effectively saving CPU resources, IO resources, disk space resources, column 16 lines 26-60 ]:
a sharding manager configured to:
split data in a first log-structured merge (LSM) tree structure into partitioned shards to reduce a number of layers for the data represented in the first LSM tree structure, wherein each partitioned shard represents an independent LSM tree structure, thus providing scalability and flexibility for the data represented in the first LSM tree structure [note: column 4 lines 40-48 key-value format; column 14 lines 15-32, “partition splitting method” using the LSM tree structure ],
split a respective one of the partitioned shards into at least a parent shard and a child shard when a volume of data therein reaches a threshold level [note: column 15 lines 30-42, optional implementation data whose data volume does not exceed a predetermined value based on a predetermined splitting rule may be split (i.e. suggests a threshold may be implemented) ]; and
merge a respective one of the partitioned shards into an adjacent one of the partitioned shards when a volume of data of the respective one of the partitioned shards decreases to a volume less than the threshold level [note: column 15 lines 25-29; also column 14 lines 15-32 “merging partition data” ].
Although Li et al. teach the invention as cited they do not explicitly teach a shard manager, a parent shard, or a child shard. However, Ravala et al. teach the feature as follows [note: paragraph 0083, manager 91; and paragraphs 0049-0051 and 0055 shard manager (i.e. processor 90 performs function of shard manager, management module 30; paragraph 0065, parent chard and child shard; also note use of thresholds; paragraph 0080-0081 with respect to adjusting capacity (i.e. volume) ]. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill at the time of the effective filing date to have combined the cited references since the references are both directed toward partitioning of shards to optimize resource usage; Ravala et al. further describes partitioning of shards process of a key-value format type.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-14 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Note attached form PTO-892.
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/GRETA L ROBINSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2163
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