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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 on12/03/2025 has been entered.
Status of the claims
Claims 1, 2, 4-9, 11-16 and 18-23 were pending, claims 1, 8 and 15 have been canceled, claims 21-23 have been added. Therefore, claims 1, 2, 4-9, 11-16 and 18-23 are currently pending for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/14/2025 is being considered by the examiner.
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, 2, 4-9, 11-16 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Thomsen (20230195747) in view of “Django 1.4 documentation”, Oct 11, 2017 (hereafter Django) and further in view of Angius et al. (US 11514080, hereafter Angius).
Regarding claim 1, Thomsen discloses: A method for managing a plurality of database engines, the method comprising, by a database server:
concurrently executing the plurality of database engines (Thomsen [0029] discloses: the transaction manager 244 can inform the involved engines about this event so they can execute necessary actions. Transaction manager 244 can provide various types of concurrency control and transaction manager 244 can cooperate with a persistence layer 246 to persist atomic and durable transactions) ; and
in response to receiving a request, from a routing server, to perform an input/output operation to a database file of a plurality of database files (Thomsen [0052] discloses: requests 355, 365 requires writing to one or more data tables, or modifying or deleting a data table):
Thomsen didn’t disclose, Django discloses: selecting, among the plurality of database engines, a database engine that is available to perform the input/output operation (
(Django [section “manually selecting a database] discloses: selecting a database for save, for moving an object),
performing at least one operation to make the database file accessible to the database engine (Django [section “Defining your databases] discloses: selecting databases for user if user attempt to access a database ] discloses: performs client write operations);
causing the database engine to perform the input/output operation to the database file (Django [section “manually selecting a database] discloses: selecting a database for save, for moving an object);
providing, to the routing server, a response in accordance with the input/output operation (Django [section “Automatic database routing”] discloses: suggest the database that should be used for read/write operations for object of type model).
Thomsen and Django are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, database management information. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Django, in order to automatic database routing. The suggestion to combine is to allocate database usage and selecting a database to control all database operations.
Thomsen as modified didn’t disclose, Angius discloses: obtaining an exclusive lock on the database file, wherein obtaining the exclusive lock comprises updating metadata associated with the database file (Angius [Col. 23, lines 20-39] discloses: micro-partition tables require an exclusive lock on the table so that FTVs can be created in a serialized manner, hence at point 9 a lock is acquired (e.g., by updating the metadata database 112) by the compute service manager 108 for every micro-partition table modified by the transaction and held until the commit is finalized);
Thomsen and Angius are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, processing concurrent transactions. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Angius, in order for managing and executing concurrent transactions . The suggestion to combine is to processing concurrent transactions to enable transactional processing across different domains in a safe and performant manner (e.g., avoiding deadlock and starvation) within the database system.
Regarding claim 2, Thomsen as modified discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the database file is encrypted by an encryption key that is associated with the database file and a corresponding user account; and the at least one operation comprises: decrypting the database file using the encryption key (Thomsen [0014] discloses: each tenant is associated with its own encryption group. In some alternative embodiments, tenants share encryption groups. A data container is a logical unit of persistence which may be encrypted at a group-level. In some embodiments, each data container is assigned to a particular encryption group. Data within one encryption group is encrypted and decrypted with the same group-level encryption key).
Regarding claim 4, Thomsen as modified discloses: The method of claim 1, further comprising: increasing or decreasing a number of the plurality of database engines executing on the database server in correlation to a rate at which input/output operations are received by the database server (Django [section “Defining your databases” ] discloses: an example setting defining two databases as a default PostgreSQL database and a MySQL database; [section “Database routers”] discloses: the methods for suggest the database that should be used for read/write).
Regarding claim 5, Thomsen as modified discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the database file corresponds to a respective user account such that data associated with the respective user account is isolated from data of other user accounts stored in other database files of the plurality of database files (Thomsen [0014] discloses: multi-tenant applications need to provide data privacy on a tenant-by tenant basis, and in some cases a particular tenant has the requirement to be responsible for the tenant's own encryption keys so that even an operator of a cloud-based application; [0022] discloses: name server 115 may manage the information regarding existing tenant databases, which tenant databases are isolated from one another ).
.
Regarding claim 6, Thomsen as modified discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein a journal is managed for the database file, and the method further comprises: updating the respective journal for the database file based on the input/output operation (Thomsen [0043] discloses: a recovery log comprises a log of all changes to database system 105 since the last system save point, such that when a database server is restarted, its latest state is restored by replaying the changes from the recovery log on top of the last system save point. Typically, in a relational database system, the previous recovery log is cleared whenever a system save point occurs, which then starts a new, empty recovery log that will be effective until the next system save point. While the recovery log is processed, a new cleanup log is generated which needs to be processed as soon as the commit is replayed to avoid a growing data area because of deleted but not garbage collected data).
Regarding claim 7, Thomsen as modified discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the input/output operation involves at least one read operation and/or at least one write operation to the database file (Thomsen [0020;0047; 0052]) .
Regarding claim 8, Thomsen as modified discloses: A non-transitory computer readable storage medium configured to store instructions that, when executed by at least one processor included in a database server, cause the database server to manage a plurality of database engines, by carrying out steps that include:
concurrently executing the plurality of database engines(Thomsen [0029] discloses: the transaction manager 244 can inform the involved engines about this event so they can execute necessary actions. Transaction manager 244 can provide various types of concurrency control and transaction manager 244 can cooperate with a persistence layer 246 to persist atomic and durable transactions) ; and
in response to receiving a request , from a routing server, to perform an input/output operation to a database file of a plurality of database files(Thomsen [0052] discloses: requests 355, 365 requires writing to one or more data tables, or modifying a data table):
Thomsen didn’t disclose, Django discloses: selecting, among the plurality of database engines, a database engine that is available to perform the input/output operation (Django [section “manually selecting a database] discloses: selecting a database for save, for moving an object),
performing at least one operation to make the database file accessible to the database engine (Django [section “Defining your databases] discloses: selecting databases for user if user attempt to access a database ] discloses: performs client write operations);
causing the database engine to perform the input/output operation to the database file (Django [section “manually selecting a database] discloses: selecting a database for save, for moving an object);
providing, to the routing server, a response in accordance with the input/output operation (Django [section “Automatic database routing”] discloses: suggest the database that should be used for read/write operations for object of type model).
Thomsen and Django are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, database management information. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Django, in order to automatic database routing. The suggestion to combine is to allocate database usage and selecting a database to control all database operations.
Thomsen as modified didn’t disclose, Angius discloses: obtaining an exclusive lock on the database file, wherein obtaining the exclusive lock comprises updating metadata associated with the database file (Angius [Col. 23, lines 20-39] discloses: micro-partition tables require an exclusive lock on the table so that FTVs can be created in a serialized manner, hence at point 9 a lock is acquired (e.g., by updating the metadata database 112) by the compute service manager 108 for every micro-partition table modified by the transaction and held until the commit is finalized);
Thomsen and Angius are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, processing concurrent transactions. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Angius, in order for managing and executing concurrent transactions . The suggestion to combine is to processing concurrent transactions to enable transactional processing across different domains in a safe and performant manner (e.g., avoiding deadlock and starvation) within the database system.
Regarding claim 9, Thomsen as modified discloses: The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the database file is encrypted by an encryption key that is associated with the database file and a corresponding user account, and the at least one operation comprises: decrypting the database file using the encryption key (Thomsen [0014] discloses: each tenant is associated with its own encryption group. In some alternative embodiments, tenants share encryption groups. A data container is a logical unit of persistence which may be encrypted at a group-level. In some embodiments, each data container is assigned to a particular encryption group. Data within one encryption group is encrypted and decrypted with the same group-level encryption key).
Regarding claim 11, Thomsen as modified discloses: The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the steps further include: increasing or decreasing a number of the plurality of database engines executing on the database server in correlation to a rate at which input/output operations are received by the database server (Django [section “Defining your databases” ] discloses: an example setting defining two databases as a default PostgreSQL database and a MySQL database; [section “Database routers”] discloses: the methods for suggest the database that should be used for read/write).
Regarding claim 12, Thomsen as modified discloses: The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the database file corresponds to a respective user account such that data associated with the respective user account is isolated from data of other user accounts stored in other database files of the plurality of database files (Thomsen [0014] discloses: multi-tenant applications need to provide data privacy on a tenant-by tenant basis, and in some cases a particular tenant has the requirement to be responsible for the tenant's own encryption keys so that even an operator of a cloud-based application; [0022] discloses: name server 115 may manage the information regarding existing tenant databases, which tenant databases are isolated from one another ).
Regarding claim 13, Thomsen as modified discloses: The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein a journal is managed for each database file, and the steps further include: updating the respective journal for the database file based on the input/output operation (Thomsen [0043] discloses: a recovery log comprises a log of all changes to database system 105 since the last system save point, such that when a database server is restarted, its latest state is restored by replaying the changes from the recovery log on top of the last system save point. Typically, in a relational database system, the previous recovery log is cleared whenever a system save point occurs, which then starts a new, empty recovery log that will be effective until the next system save point. While the recovery log is processed, a new cleanup log is generated which needs to be processed as soon as the commit is replayed to avoid a growing data area because of deleted but not garbage collected data).
Regarding claim 14, Thomsen as modified discloses: The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the input/output operation involves at least one read operation or at least one write operation to the database file (Thomsen [0020;0047; 0052]) .
Regarding claim 15, Thomsen as modified discloses: A database server configured to manage a plurality of database engines, the database server comprising at least one processor configured to cause the database server to carry out steps that include (Thomsen [0004]):
concurrently executing the plurality of database engines(Thomsen [0029] discloses: the transaction manager 244 can inform the involved engines about this event so they can execute necessary actions. Transaction manager 244 can provide various types of concurrency control and transaction manager 244 can cooperate with a persistence layer 246 to persist atomic and durable transactions) ; and
in response to receiving a request, from a routing server, to perform an input/output operation to a database file of a plurality of database files(Thomsen [0052] discloses: requests 355, 365 requires writing to one or more data tables, or modifying a data table):
Thomsen didn’t disclose, Django discloses: selecting, among the plurality of database engines, a database engine that is available to perform the input/output operation (Django [section “manually selecting a database] discloses: selecting a database for save, for moving an object),
performing at least one operation to make the database file accessible to the database engine (Django [section “Defining your databases] discloses: selecting databases for user if user attempt to access a database ] discloses: performs client write operations);
causing the database engine to perform the input/output operation to the database file (Django [section “manually selecting a database] discloses: selecting a database for save, for moving an object);
providing, to the routing server, a response in accordance with the input/output operation (Django [section “Automatic database routing”] discloses: suggest the database that should be used for read/write operations for object of type model).
Thomsen and Django are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, database management information. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Django, in order to automatic database routing. The suggestion to combine is to allocate database usage and selecting a database to control all database operations.
Thomsen as modified didn’t disclose, Angius discloses: obtaining an exclusive lock on the database file, wherein obtaining the exclusive lock comprises updating metadata associated with the database file (Angius [Col. 23, lines 20-39] discloses: micro-partition tables require an exclusive lock on the table so that FTVs can be created in a serialized manner, hence at point 9 a lock is acquired (e.g., by updating the metadata database 112) by the compute service manager 108 for every micro-partition table modified by the transaction and held until the commit is finalized);
Thomsen and Angius are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, processing concurrent transactions. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Angius, in order for managing and executing concurrent transactions . The suggestion to combine is to processing concurrent transactions to enable transactional processing across different domains in a safe and performant manner (e.g., avoiding deadlock and starvation) within the database system.
Regarding claim 16, Thomsen as modified discloses: The database server of claim 15, wherein the database file is encrypted by an encryption key that is associated with the database file and a corresponding user account; and the at least one operation comprises: decrypting the database file using the encryption key(Thomsen [0014] discloses: each tenant is associated with its own encryption group. In some alternative embodiments, tenants share encryption groups. A data container is a logical unit of persistence which may be encrypted at a group-level. In some embodiments, each data container is assigned to a particular encryption group. Data within one encryption group is encrypted and decrypted with the same group-level encryption key).
Regarding claim 18, Thomsen as modified discloses: The database server of claim 15, wherein the steps further include: increasing or decreasing a number of the plurality of database engines executing on the database server in correlation to a rate at which input/output operations are received by the database server (Django [section “Defining your databases” ] discloses: an example setting defining two databases as a default PostgreSQL database and a MySQL database; [section “Database routers”] discloses: the methods for suggest the database that should be used for read/write).
Regarding claim 19, Thomsen as modified discloses: The database server of claim 15, wherein the database file corresponds to a respective user account such that data associated with the respective user account is isolated from data of other user accounts stored in other database files of the plurality of database files(Thomsen [0014] discloses: multi-tenant applications need to provide data privacy on a tenant-by tenant basis, and in some cases a particular tenant has the requirement to be responsible for the tenant's own encryption keys so that even an operator of a cloud-based application; [0022] discloses: name server 115 may manage the information regarding existing tenant databases, which tenant databases are isolated from one another ).
Regarding claim 20, Thomsen as modified discloses: The database server of claim 15, wherein a journal is managed for each database file of the plurality of database files, and the steps further include: updating the respective journal for the database file based on the input/output operation (Thomsen [0043] discloses: a recovery log comprises a log of all changes to database system 105 since the last system save point, such that when a database server is restarted, its latest state is restored by replaying the changes from the recovery log on top of the last system save point. Typically, in a relational database system, the previous recovery log is cleared whenever a system save point occurs, which then starts a new, empty recovery log that will be effective until the next system save point. While the recovery log is processed, a new cleanup log is generated which needs to be processed as soon as the commit is replayed to avoid a growing data area because of deleted but not garbage collected data).
Claims 21-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Thomsen (20230195747) in view of “Django 1.4 documentation”, Oct 11, 2017 (hereafter Django) in view of (Black et al. (US 20200100106, hereafter Black).
Regarding claim 21, Thomsen as modified didn’t disclose, but Black discloses: The method of claim 2, wherein the encryption key is received in conjunction with the request (Black [0107; 0143] discloses: received the encryption key).
Thomsen as modified and Black are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, database management information. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Black, in order to secure and protect a secure network or database. The suggestion to combine is to provide security to the secure database.
Regarding claim 22, Thomsen as modified discloses: The method of claim 2, further including responsive to receiving an indication that access to the database file is no longer required, performing at least one additional operation to re-encrypt the database file (Black [0144; 0159] discloses: If the data is stored encrypted by the routing system 1906, then this data is decrypted, and then re-encrypted by the symbolic https key that had been shared earlier between the routing system 1906 and the client browser of the user 1902 at 1944. This encrypted data is returned to the client browser of the user 1902 at 1946, where it is decrypted and used as required).
Thomsen as modified and Black are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, database management information. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Black, in order to secure and protect a secure network or database. The suggestion to combine is to provide security to the secure database.
Regarding claim 23, Thomsen as modified discloses: The database server of claim 16, wherein the steps further include, responsive to receiving an indication that access to the database file is no longer required, performing at least one additional operation to re-encrypt the database file (Black [0144; 0159] discloses: If the data is stored encrypted by the routing system 1906, then this data is decrypted, and then re-encrypted by the symbolic https key that had been shared earlier between the routing system 1906 and the client browser of the user 1902 at 1944. This encrypted data is returned to the client browser of the user 1902 at 1946, where it is decrypted and used as required).
Thomsen as modified and Black are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, database management information. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Thomsen, to include the teaching of Black, in order to secure and protect a secure network or database. The suggestion to combine is to provide security to the secure database.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments 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.
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/CINDY NGUYEN/Examiner, Art Unit 2161