DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 November 10, 2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-21 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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 1-4, 8-11 and 15-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sucharitakul (US Patent 7,454,571) in view of Kohno (US Patent Application Publication 2013/0144853) and further in view of Hassan et al (US Patent Application Publication 2022/0006855).
Claims 1, 8 and 15: Sucharitakul discloses a method, a system and a tangible computer program product including a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising:
operating a database system with caching of resources (Fig. 1, Col 4 ln 51-62).
tracking statistics for use and reuse of the resources on a resource type basis (Col 5 ln 1-13). [See at least “monitoring the cache and accumulating statistics as operation continues.”]
using the statistics that were tracked for use and reuse of the resources on the resource type basis to adjust the caching of one or more resource types in the database system (Col 7 ln 31-45). [See at least identifying frequently used/reused items and modifying what gets cached.]
Sucharitakul alone does not explicitly disclose wherein a resource type for a corresponding resource is specified in a name or metadata of the corresponding resource and individual ones of the statistics represent use or reuse of multiple resources of a respective single resource type.
However, Hassan [0033, 0065] discloses at least resource metadata, which identifies at least the resource type. The metadata also includes resource usage.
As such, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify Sucharitakul with Hassan. One would have been motivated to do so in order to identify which resources to use for running a process.
Sucharitakul alone also does not explicitly disclose wherein at least one of the statistics tracks a number of requests to obtain a lock on one or more of the resources.
However, Kohno [0056, 0068, 0076] discloses a lock request counter for specific resources.
As such, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify Sucharitakul with Kohno. One would have been motivated to do so in order to track lock requests for further statistical processing for resources.
Claims 2, 9 and 16: Sucharitakul as modified discloses the method, the system and the medium of Claims 1, 8 and 15 above, and Sucharitakul further discloses wherein the statistics for use and reuse of the resources on the resource type basis comprise at least one of a cache use statistic, a cache reuse statistic, a cleanup statistic, or a cache miss statistic (Col 5 ln 1-13).
Claims 3, 10 and 17: Sucharitakul as modified discloses the method, the system and the medium of Claims 1, 8 and 15 above, but Kohno, for the same reasons as above, further discloses wherein the requests to obtain the lock on one or more of the resources comprise convert messages [0056, 0068, 0076]. [Convert messages seem to be at least lock requests (see instant specification at [0045]) Kohno, in at least the cited portions, discloses sending lock requests.]
Claims 4, 11 and 18: Sucharitakul as modified discloses the method, the system and the medium of Claims 1, 8 and 15 above, and Sucharitakul further discloses wherein a counter is maintained that increments when an event corresponding to use or reuse occurs for a resource of a given resource type (Col 7 ln 16-45). [See at least identifying when items are accessed (i.e. used or reused) frequently.]
Claims 5, 12 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sucharitakul (US Patent 7,454,571) in view of Kohno (US Patent Application Publication 2013/0144853) further in view of Hassan et al (US Patent Application Publication 2022/0006855) and further in view of Durbhakula (US Patent Application Publication 2024/0289915)
Claims 5, 12 and 19: Sucharitakul discloses the method, the system and the medium of Claims 1, 8 and 15 above, but Sucharitakul alone does not explicitly disclose wherein a reuse rate is calculated for a given resource type over a time interval, and the reuse rate is analyzed to determine whether to adjust the caching for the given resource type.
However, Sucharitakul (Col 7 ln 31-45) discloses identifying frequently used/reused items and modifying what gets cached; And Durbhakula [0113] discloses monitoring a hit rate for a cache over a period of time and adjusting a cache based on the rate.
As such, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify Sucharitakul with Durbhakula. One would have been motivated to do so in order to identify how frequently items are used in a cache during particular time intervals in order to identify most used items in a cache.
Claims 6, 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sucharitakul (US Patent 7,454,571) in view of Kohno (US Patent Application Publication 2013/0144853) further in view of Hassan et al (US Patent Application Publication 2022/0006855) further in view of Durbhakula (US Patent Application Publication 2024/0289915) and further in view of Zhang et al (US Patent Application Publication 2020/0401529).
Claims 6, 13 and 20: Sucharitakul discloses the method, the system and the medium of Claims 5, 12 and 19 above, but Sucharitakul alone does not explicitly disclose wherein the reuse rate is determined by dividing a difference in a reuse counter value from a start of a time interval to an end of the time interval by a number of cached resources for the given resource type.
However, Durbhakula [0113] discloses monitoring a hit rate for a cache over a period of time and Zhang [0034] discloses calculating a reuse ratio as “the number of reuses divided by a sum of the reuses and no-reuses such as the value of the reuse field 204 divided by the sum of the reuse field 204 and the no-reuse field.” Furthermore, Zhang, as described earlier, discloses calculating a reuse rate. However, using a particular formula to identify a reuse, but in a different manner may be considered as an obvious variation of identifying a particular attribute (i.e. reuse rate).
As such, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify Sucharitakul with Durbhakula and Zhang. One would have been motivated to do so in order to identify cached items.
Claims 7, 14 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sucharitakul (US Patent 7,454,571) in view of Kohno (US Patent Application Publication 2013/0144853) further in view of Hassan et al (US Patent Application Publication 2022/0006855) further in view of Christofferson et al (US Patent Application Publication 2004/0039886) and further in view of Zhang et al (US Patent Application Publication 2023/0333958), hereinafter Zhang 2.
Claims 7, 14 and 21: Sucharitakul discloses the method, the system and the medium of Claims 1, 8 and 15 above, but Sucharitakul alone does not explicitly disclose wherein rolling average and standard deviation values for the statistics are used to determine whether to adjust the caching of the resource types in the database system.
However, Christofferson [0059] discloses identifying a particular cache statistics using a rolling average; Zhang 2 [0014] further discloses identifying a particular cache statistics using a standard deviation; And Sucharitakul (Col 7 ln 31-45) discloses at least adjusting what gets cached based on statistics.
As such, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify Sucharitakul with Christofferson and Zhang 2. One would have been motivated to do so in order to identify what to cache.
Conclusion
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/ALEX GOFMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2163