DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the. Claims 1-20 are pending.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which applicant regards as the invention.
The following claim language lacks antecedent basis:
Claims 1, 9 and 17: “the service for execution”.
The following claim languages are not clear and indefinite:
As per claim 1, 9 and 17 it is not clear if the “operation request” is received “at a service instance” or if the “operation request at a service instance” is received. Furthermore, it is not clear if “the service” to which “execution” is “delegated” to is the same as the “service instance” or not.
It is also not clear what the “intent” can be (e.g. it is an ID; it is a resource requirement; it is an operation constraint, etc.).
The dependent claims do not cure the 112(b) issues of their respective parent claims. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons as those presented for their respective parent claims.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 103 as being unpatentable over Tobler et al (U.S. Pat. 9385963) in view of Lee et al (U.S. Pub. 2022/0171658).
As per claim 1 Tobler teaches the invention substantially as claimed including a computer-implemented method for processing operation requests in a computing environment (Figs. 1 and 2), the method comprising:
receiving an operation request at a service instance running in the computing environment (col 4 lines 47-51 service call requests for different services are received; col 6 lines 12-17, 47-58 the services are provided by a system, and the services correspond to different types of hardware and/or software resources);
submitting the request to an intent valet platform to process the operation request (col 4 lines 51-63, col 6 lines 47-58 received requests are communicated to admission control subsystem to perform … the requested services on behalf of the clients);
creating an intent for the operation request in the intent valet platform, wherein the intent specifies a requested operation in the operation request; queuing the intent in queues (col 10 lines 61-67, col 6 lines 59-67, col 9 lines 25-44 identifiers of service request are created and placed in corresponding service request queue, which identifies a type of service that was requested ); retrieving the intent from the queues for processing (col 11 lines 15-19);
delegating the requested operation for the retrieved intent to the service for execution from the intent valet platform (col 11 lines 19-22 requests are serviced using resources that are granted to the requests; col 6 lines 50-58 the resources provide services that are used by the requests); and
updating the queues when a completion signal from the service is received at the intent valet platform (col 7 lines 25-28).
Tobler does not explicitly teach that the queuing of intents, which identifies requested services, to queues includes queueing the intents in an intent table of intents; that the intents are retrieved from the intent table for processing; and when a completion signal from the service is received marking the intent as being in a terminal state.
However, Lee teaches that the queuing of intents, which identifies requested services, to queues includes queueing the intents in an intent table of intents ([0052]-[0055]); that the intents are retrieved from the intent table for processing ([0060], [0061], [0063], [0065], [0071] active scheduler of slave processors uses table to obtain requested jobs for execution); and when a completion signal from the service is received marking the intent as being in a terminal state ([0066], [0067).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the prior to the effective filling date of the invention to combine the teachings of Lee and Tobler because both are directed towards distributed processing of tasks. One with ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to incorporate the teachings of Lee into that of Tobler because Lee further improves performance of distributed processing of tasks ([0003], [0004]).
As per claim 2 Lee teaches wherein the intent includes an object dependency against which the requested operation is to be performed ([0053], [0056], Fig. 3).
As per claim 3 Tobler as modified by Lee teaches wherein retrieving the intent from the intent table for processing is executed by a dispatcher that is exclusively associated with the service (Lee [0063], [0065], [0077] active schedulers of slave processors obtain jobs for execution and update table accordingly; Tobler col 6 lines 47-58 processors are computation resources that provides different services).
As per claim 4 Lee teaches wherein delegating the requested operation to the service for execution from the intent valet platform is executed by a serializer that serially processes conflicting intents that operate on one or more same objects ([0063], [0065], [0078]-[0080] active scheduler of corresponding slave processors serially execute jobs based on dependencies of the jobs, jobs that are waiting on results of the same preceding job are executed after the preceding job is done).
As per claim 5 Lee teaches wherein each of the intents in the intent table of intents is associated with a status state, the status state is a QUEUED state, a DISPATCHED state, an IN_PROGRESS state, a COMPLETED state, a CANCELLED state or a FAILED state (Figs. 3, 4).
As per claim 6 Lee wherein the intent is marked as being in the DISPATCHED state when the intent is retrieved from the intent table for processing ([0063], [0065] the table is updated with IDs of corresponding slave processor when the corresponding slave processor obtains a job to be executed).
As per claim 7 Lee teaches further comprising creating multiple serializers to process the intents in the intent table, wherein each of the multiple serializers selects the intents with a same object dependency ([0063], [0065], [0077] active schedulers are parts of their corresponding slave processors, and they are responsible for selecting job for execution based on dependencies of the jobs in the table; while Lee does not explicitly state that the active schedulers are created, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the computing art to see that the existence of the active schedulers on each of the slave processors must mean that at some point the active schedulers are created on the slave processors).
As per claim 8 Tobler as modified by Lee teaches further comprising creating multiple dispatchers to process the intents in the intent table, wherein each of the multiple dispatchers operates for a single service (Lee [0063], [0065], [0077] active schedulers are parts of their corresponding slave processors, and they are responsible for selecting job for execution based on dependencies of the jobs in the table; while Lee does not explicitly state that the active schedulers are created, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the computing art to see that the existence of the active schedulers on each of the slave processors must mean that at some point the active schedulers are created on the slave processors; Tobler col 6 lines 47-58 processors are computation resources that provides different services ).
As per claims 9-16 they are product versions of method claims 1-8. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons, mutatis mutandis, as those presented for claims 1-8, respectively.
As per claims 17-20 they are product versions of method claims 1-4. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons, mutatis mutandis, as those presented for claims 1-4, respectively.
Conclusion
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/BING ZHAO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2151
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