DETAILED ACTION
1. This office action is in response to application 18/897,115 filed on 9/26/2024. Claims 1-20 are pending in this office action.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
2. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Allowable Subject Matter
3. Claims 4 and 15 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.
With respect to claims 4 and 15 the prior art does not teach or fairly suggest that nodes of the first incremental metadata tree and nodes of the second incremental metadata tree both store operation types of metadata change operations within the context of all the limitations included in claims 4 and 15.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
4. 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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 5-14 and 16-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2023/0325352 (hereinafter LIU) in view of 9,824,095 (hereinafter Taylor).
As for claim 1 LIU discloses: A metadata tree snapshot method, comprising: acquiring a basic metadata tree and a first incremental metadata tree (See paragraphs 0005, 0017-0019 and 0039 note the system maintains a metadata tree that is updated/modified using snapshots), wherein the basic metadata tree is created based on first snapshot data, the basic metadata tree is locked after being created (See paragraphs 0019 note each node within trees can be locked or an entire tree can be locked).
LIU does not explicitly disclose: the first snapshot data is created at a previous snapshot time instant, and the first incremental metadata tree is created based on a metadata change operation after the basic metadata tree is created; locking the first incremental metadata tree in response to reaching a current snapshot time instant; and creating second snapshot data based on the basic metadata tree and the locked first incremental metadata tree. Taylor however discloses: the first snapshot data is created at a previous snapshot time instant, and the first incremental metadata tree is created based on a metadata change operation after the basic metadata tree is created (See column ; locking the first incremental metadata tree in response to reaching a current snapshot time instant (See column 6 line 50-column 7 line 10 and column 13 lines 1-30 note file locking can occur during updates and modifications); and creating second snapshot data based on the basic metadata tree and the locked first incremental metadata tree (See figures 16A, figure 20 and column 11 lines 1-20 note once the system locks the incremental metadata tree the basic tree is stored for access and historical use). It would have been obvious to an artisan of ordinary skill in the pertinent at the time the instantly claimed invention was filed to have incorporated the teaching of Taylor into the system of LIU. The modification would have been obvious because the two references are concerned with the solution to problem of metadata processing (See LIU and Taylor abstracts), therefore there is an implicit motivation to combine these references (i.e. motivation from the references themselves). In other words, the ordinary skilled artisan, during his/her quest for a solution to the cited problem, would look to the cited references at the time the invention was made. Consequently, the ordinary skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine the cited references since Taylor’s teaching would enable users of the LIU system to have more efficient processing.
As for claim 2 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further Taylor discloses: wherein after the locking the first incremental metadata tree, the method further comprises: creating a second incremental metadata tree based on a metadata change operation after the current snapshot time instant (See column 9 lines 25-40 note with each change an incremental snapshot is created further see column 14 line 50- column 15 line 5).
As for claim 3 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further Taylor discloses: determining, in response to receiving a first metadata query request, a first metadata query result based on the basic metadata tree, the first incremental metadata tree and the second incremental metadata tree during a process of creating the second snapshot data (See column 40 line 60- column 41 line 46 note the system uses a peer querying system to access data while incremental trees are created and the original metadata tree is locked).
As for claim 5 the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated and further Taylor discloses: wherein after completion of the creating of the second snapshot data, the method further comprises: generating a new basic metadata tree based on the second snapshot data, and taking the second incremental metadata tree as a new first incremental metadata tree (See column 11 lines 1-20 note as the data is added, See column 15 lines 35-50 note data is flushed as new incremental snapshots are created).
As for claim 6 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further Taylor discloses: determining, in response to receiving a second metadata query request, a second metadata query result based on the basic metadata tree and the first incremental metadata tree before the creating of the second snapshot data or after completion of the creating of the second snapshot data (See column 41 lines 42-52 note the queries can be limited to a subset of nodes that have been flushed).
As for claim 7 the rejection of claim 6 is incorporated and further LIU discloses: wherein a node of the first incremental metadata tree stores an operation type of a metadata change operation (See paragraph 0069 note the update operation) and the determining the second metadata query result based on the basic metadata tree and the first incremental metadata tree comprises: performing a metadata query on the basic metadata tree to obtain a fourth subquery result; performing a metadata query on the first incremental metadata tree to obtain a fifth subquery result; and merging the fourth subquery result and the fifth subquery result based on an operation type stored in an node comprised in the fifth subquery result to obtain the second metadata query result (See paragraph 0078 note the system will merge child nodes either reactively or proactively based on the usage needs of the system).
As for claim 8 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further LIU discloses: wherein creating the second snapshot data based on the basic metadata tree and the locked first
incremental metadata tree comprises: constructing a merged metadata tree based on the basic metadata tree and the locked first incremental metadata tree; and creating the second snapshot data based on the merged metadata tree (See paragraphs 0067 and 0078 note the system will lock individual nodes to construct the merged tree while unlocked nodes are used for accessing data and further individual snapshots).
As for claim 9 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further Taylor discloses: wherein the basic metadata tree comprises any one of the followings: a directory tree in a distributed file system; or a metadata tree composed of metadata corresponding to data shards in a distributed database (See column 47 lines 20-55 note the system can use a directory hierarchy/tree that is traversed to find the necessary data).
Claims 10 and 11 are metadata tree query method claims substantially corresponding to the method of claims 1-3 and 7 and are thus rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claims 1-3, and 7.
Claims 12-14 and 16 are apparatus claims substantially corresponding to the method of claims 1-3 and 5-7 and are thus rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claims 1-3 and 5-7.
Claims 17 and 18 are metadata tree query apparatus claims substantially corresponding to the method of claims 1 and 7 and are thus rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claims 1 and 7.
Claim 19 is a non-transitory claim substantially corresponding to the method of claim 1 and is thus rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
Claim 20 is a non-transitory claim substantially corresponding to the metadata tree query method of claim 10 and is thus rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 10.
Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ELIYAH STONE HARPER whose telephone number is (571)272-0759. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 10:00 am - 6:00 pm.
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/Eliyah S. Harper/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166 January 6, 2026