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 .
Response to Amendment
The Amendment, filed on 4/6/2026, has been entered and acknowledged by the Examiner. Claims 24-43 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 24-43 have been considered; however, the new ground(s) of rejection is rendered in light of the Amendment, filed on 11/13/2025.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claims 24-43 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Naqvi (Time Series Databases and InfluxDB, December 2017) in view of Pal et al. (US Pub. 2020/0050586, “Pal”), and further in view of Kraytem (US Pat. 10,360,252).
Regarding claim 24, Naqvi discloses a system comprising: at least one processor configured to execute a database engine configured to:
store, in a database a plurality of timeseries events as a plurality of documents within a bucket in a columnar format (p. 16, a new storage engine of InfluxDB, TSM Tree, as discussed in Section 2.1.3, is columnar format, which means that the number of fields does not affect querying performance in a negative way), each of the plurality of documents comprising a time value for one of the plurality of timeseries events and metadata associating the document (p. 9, The next two columns, minors and adults, are fields (another term for attributes). Each field consists of a field key e.g. minors and a field value) with a common source of the plurality of timeseries events, wherein the bucket stores the time values of the plurality of documents in the columnar format (p. 5, TSDBs typically include functions and operations that are common to time series data analysis) and the bucket further stores (p. 26, bucket stores data); and
index the plurality of timeseries events represented by the plurality of documents based on the time values (p. 21, Tags are indexed and fields are not, so store data in tags if they are commonly-queried meta data or used in GROUP BY clauses. Store data in fields if they are used with aggregation functions).
Pal further discloses common metadata that is common to the plurality of documents, the common metadata associating the plurality of documents with the common source of the plurality of timeseries events (¶ [0219], a common field name may be used to reference two or more fields containing equivalent and/or similar data items, even though the fields may be associated with different types of events).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Pal into Naqvi to facilitate the use of a common information model (CIM) (¶ [0219).
Naqvi does not explicitly disclose consolidates the metadata values, but Kraytem discloses consolidates the metadata values (col. 14: 13-19).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Kraytem into Pal and Naqvi to provide a powerful and efficient consolidated and coordinated solution to the problem of detecting, identifying, and supplying missing metadata item values.
Regarding claim 25, Naqvi in view of Pal and Kraytem disclose the system according to claim 24, wherein the database engine is configured to index the plurality of documents using a B-tree (p. 12, B-Tree indexing).
Regarding claim 26, Naqvi in view of Pal discloses the system according to claim 24, wherein the database engine is configured to index the plurality of documents based on the common source of the plurality of timeseries events using a same key-value pair, a value of the key-value pair being user-defined (p. 10, Each field key-field value pair is a field set).
Regarding claim 27, Naqvi in view of Pal and Kraytem disclose the system according to claim 24, wherein each bucket of documents represents data collected for the common source during a predetermined interval of time (¶¶ [0019], [0046], having common source(s)).
Regarding claim 28, Naqvi in view of Pal and Kraytem disclose the system according to claim 24, wherein each bucket is indexed with a respective key (¶ [0387], generated at index time and stored as part of extraction rules in configuration file 712. For example, fields that appear in the event data as “key=value” pairs may be automatically extracted as part of an automatic field discovery process).
Regarding claim 29, Naqvi in view of Pal discloses the system according to claim 24, wherein the database engine is configured to store each of the plurality of timeseries events as represented by a single logical document of the plurality of documents, respectively (¶ [1487]).
Regarding claim 30, Naqvi in view of Pal and Kraytem disclose the system according to claim 24, wherein the database engine is configured to perform windowing operations using window bounds based on time and/or the plurality of documents (¶ [0397], the user can select the size of a time window to search for real-time events).
Regarding claim 31, Naqvi in view of Pal and Kraytem disclose the system according to claim 24, wherein the database engine is adapted to perform a windowing operation that produces an output stage that depends upon a range of input documents defined by window bounds and a partition key (¶ [0289], Timestamps enable a user to search for events based on a time range).
Regarding claim 32, Naqvi in view of Pal and Kraytem disclose the system according to claim 24, wherein the database engine is configured to index the plurality of timeseries events based on geographically-based indices (¶ [0236]).
Regarding claim 33, Naqvi in view of Pal and Kraytem disclose the system according to claim 24, wherein the database comprises a flexible schema database and the metadata comprises a key-value pair ([0214] The data intake and query system uses a flexible schema to specify how to extract information from events).
Regarding claims 34-42, see discussion of claims 24-33 above for the same reason of rejection.
Regarding claim 43, Naqvi and Kraytem disclose a database system, comprising: a database (abstract); and at least one processor configured to store timestamped measurements in the database using a bucket data structure at least in part by (p. 30):
storing, in a bucket data structure, time values of a plurality of documents in a column, each of the plurality of documents representing a timestamped measurement of the timestamped measurements and comprising a time value of the time values and a metadata value (p. 3, For instance timestamped data, such as log files and IoT devices’ measurements can be considered time series); and
storing, in the bucket data structure, a common metadata value that matches the metadata value of the plurality of documents, wherein the common metadata value associates the plurality of documents with a source that generated the timestamped measurements represented by the plurality of documents, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to index the timestamped measurements in the database based on the time value (p. 3, e there is a dependency between time and measurements and changing the order could change the meaning of the data. Example time series would be the hourly measurements of temperature at a specific weather station, daily measurements of the closing price of a specific stock, etc.).
Pal further discloses common metadata that is common to the plurality of documents, the common metadata associating the plurality of documents with the common source of the plurality of timeseries events (¶ [0219], a common field name may be used to reference two or more fields containing equivalent and/or similar data items, even though the fields may be associated with different types of events).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Pal into Naqvi to facilitate the use of a common information model (CIM) (¶ [0219).
Naqvi does not explicitly disclose consolidates the metadata values, but Kraytem discloses consolidates the metadata values (col. 14: 13-19).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Kraytem into Pal and Naqvi to provide a powerful and efficient consolidated and coordinated solution to the problem of detecting, identifying, and supplying missing metadata item values.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated, by the amendment, filed 11/13/2025, the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/TUANKHANH D PHAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2154
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