DETAILED ACTION
This office action is in response to application filed on 2/20/2024.
Claims 1 – 18 are pending.
Priority is claimed to EP application EP23157644.8 (filed on 2/20/2023).
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 14 recites the limitation "the database" in line 1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1 – 7, 13, 15, 17 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Nikitina et al (US 20190147079, prior art part of IDS dated 10/4/2024, hereinafter Nikitina).
As per claim 1, Nikitina discloses: A computer-implemented method for publishing an event to at least one data stream, the method comprising:
receiving an operation to be performed on a domain table; (Nikitina [0023]: “Performance of the multi-system operation begins at step 100, at which a request to perform a multi-system operation (MSO1) is received”.)
performing the operation on the domain table; populating an event log table with event data, the event data being based on the operation performed on the domain table; (Nikitina [0025]: “When the first transaction TX1 commits, commit records for the first transaction are stored in a first commit log 212 of the first database system 206. Consequently, upon commit of the first transaction TX1, all changes made by the first transaction (including both those made to the multi-system operation table MSOT1 and those made to other tables (e.g. table 210)) will be reflected in commit records that are all assigned the same transaction identifier TX1-id. Specifically, the commit records for the first transaction TX1 will contain the before and after values of all data items changed by the first transaction TX1.”)
publishing, in response to the populating of the event log table, an event to a target stream, the event being based on the event data. (Nikitina [0084]: “each of systems 2-N analyzes all of the events in event stream 217 (either directly or by reading event log 218) to find events that would require actions to be taken by their respective service applications. Rather than have each service application examine all such events, the event stream 271 (or event log 218) may be managed by a publish/subscribe system, where streaming module 124 “publishes” event records to the event log 218, and each of the service applications subscribes to the event records that are associated with operation types that involve the service.”.)
As per claim 2, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 1, wherein performing the operation on the domain table and populating the event log table with the event data occur simultaneously, optionally wherein the two steps occur with atomicity. (Nikitina [0025].)
As per claim 3, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 1, wherein the event data comprises a status identifier, and wherein, at the point of populating the event log table, the status identifier identifies that the event is pending publication. (Nikitina [0065].)
As per claim 4, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving confirmation that the event has been published to the at least one stream. (Nikitina [0066].)
As per claim 5, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 4, further comprising: updating the status identifier in the event log table to identify that the event has completed publication. (Nikitina [0066].)
As per claim 6, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 1, wherein the event data further comprises a target stream identifier, and wherein publishing the event to the target stream comprises: determining, based on the target stream identifier, the target stream to which to publish the event. (Nikitina [0084].)
As per claim 7, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 6, wherein the target stream identifier comprises an event type identifier, and wherein determining the target stream to which to publish the event comprises: determining an event type of the event from the event type identifier; and determining a target stream associated with the event type, optionally retrieving the target stream from a lookup table. (Nikitina [0084].)
As per claim 13, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 1, wherein the domain table and event log table are stored in a first domain, and wherein the target stream publishes the event to a second domain, distinct from the first domain. (Nikitina figure 2A.)
As per claim 15, Nikitina further discloses:
The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving a second operation to be performed on the domain table; repeating the steps of claim 1 for the second operation. (Nikitina [0023], [0025] and [0084].)
As per claim 17, Nikitina further discloses:
A data processing apparatus comprising a processor configured to carry out the method of claim 1. (Nikitina figure 4.)
As per claim 18, Nikitina further discloses:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon a computer program which, when executed on a computer, causes the computer to carry out the method of claim 1. (Nikitina [0132] - [0133].)
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) 8, 11 and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nikitina, and in view of Waltz et al (US 20190372924, hereinafter Waltz).
As per claim 8, Nikitina did not explicitly disclose:
However, Waltz teaches:
The method of claim 7, wherein if the event data comprises no event type identifier or if no target stream can be determined to be associated with the event type, the method is aborted. (Waltz [0113] – [0114])
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Waltz into that of Nikitina in order to abort the method if the event data comprises no event type identifier or if no target stream can be determined to be associated with the event type. Although Nikitina did not explicitly teach the event and the outcome of “if the event data comprises no event type identifier or if no target stream can be determined to be associated with the event type”, one of ordinary skill in the art can easily see that what is claimed is merely an obvious outcome of the event publication, as demonstrated by Waltz [0113] – [0114], such combination merely claims the combination of known parts in the field to achieve predictable results and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
As per claim 11, Nikitina did not explicitly disclose:
The method of claim 1, further comprising: identifying that publishing the event to the target stream has failed; and retrying the publishing step at least once, optionally three times, wherein retrying steps are halted if the event successfully publishes.
However, Waltz teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising: identifying that publishing the event to the target stream has failed; and retrying the publishing step at least once, optionally three times, wherein retrying steps are halted if the event successfully publishes. (Waltz [0113] – [0114])
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Waltz into that of Nikitina in order to identify that publishing the event to the target stream has failed; and retrying the publishing step at least once, optionally three times, wherein retrying steps are halted if the event successfully publishes. One of ordinary skill in the art can easily see that what is claimed is merely a commonly known and obvious steps for error correction in the event stream, as demonstrated by Waltz [0113] – [0114], such combination merely claims the combination of known parts in the field to achieve predictable results and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
As per claim 16, Nikitina did not explicitly disclose:
The method of claim 15, further comprising: determining that publishing the event based on one or both of the first and second operations failed to be performed successfully; and at a configurable interval, retrying each publishing that is determined to have failed.
However, Waltz teaches:
The method of claim 15, further comprising: determining that publishing the event based on one or both of the first and second operations failed to be performed successfully; and at a configurable interval, retrying each publishing that is determined to have failed. (Waltz [0113] – [0114])
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Waltz into that of Nikitina in order to determine that publishing the event based on one or both of the first and second operations failed to be performed successfully; and at a configurable interval, retrying each publishing that is determined to have failed. One of ordinary skill in the art can easily see that what is claimed is merely a commonly known and obvious steps for error correction in the event stream, as demonstrated by Waltz [0113] – [0114], such combination merely claims the combination of known parts in the field to achieve predictable results and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
Claim(s) 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nikitina, in view of Cella et al (US 2023022388, hereinafter Cella).
As per claim 14, Nikitina did not explicitly disclose:
The method of claim 1, wherein the database is a NoSQL Database.
However, Cella teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the database is a NoSQL Database. (Cella [0379])
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Cella into that of Nikitina in order to have the database is a NoSQL Database. Nikitina figure 2A clearly shows databases, and the claimed NoSQL database is just a specific design choice made by the applicant and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Dorai et al (US 20100042999) teaches “A transaction is received from a client and is executed, wherein the transaction comprises reading a read-only derived object, or reading or writing another object, and ends with a decision to request committing the transaction or a decision to request aborting the transaction. Responsive to a decision to request committing the transaction, wherein the transaction comprises writing a publishing object, events are delivered to event stream processing queries, and are executed in parallel with executing of the transaction. Responsive to a decision to request committing a transaction that comprises reading a read-only derived object, a validation is performed to determine whether the transaction can proceed to be committed, whether the transaction should abort, or whether the validation should delay waiting for one or more event stream processing queries to complete.”;
Yu et al (US 20230342143) teaches “provides for three events tables rather than one table. Two of the three tables are domain event outbox tables that are parallel and equivalent to each other. The third table is a domain event indication table, which records which of the domain event outbox tables is in a serve mode versus a maintain mode. At any point in time, one of the two domain event outbox tables is in serve mode while the other is in maintain mode. Serve mode is used for event insert, update, and query, while maintain mode is used for event purge.”
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHARLES M SWIFT whose telephone number is (571)270-7756. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 9:30 AM - 7PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, April Blair can be reached at 5712701014. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHARLES M SWIFT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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