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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed August 14, 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that Ohkawa does not teach or suggest “periodically obtaining, by a first computing node, the at least one SQL statement from the first RDMA memory” because a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand that periodically obtaining is not the same as the continuous operation cited by the rejection. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. While the Examiner agrees the claim term “periodically” can indicate a regular interval, and acknowledges the intended scope of the claims, the claim limitations are to be given their plain meaning under the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims. The plain meaning of “periodically” also includes “from time to time”. The claim language does not impose specific limitations on the time between SQL statements. Under the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims, “periodically obtaining” SQL statements encompasses the computing node of Ohkawa continuously receiving SQL statements at unspecified intervals.
Drawings
The drawings were received on August 14, 2026. These drawings are accepted.
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 1, 2, 12, 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ohkawa (US Patent Application Publication 2014/0052826, cited in previous action) in view of Huang et al. (NPL, High-Performance Design of HBase with RDMA over Infiniband, cited in previous action), hereinafter Huang.
Regarding claim 1, Ohkawa teaches a method for obtaining node state information, wherein the method comprises:
writing, by a first management node (Fig. 6, the client 10 is the management node. The component of the management node that writes is the client application 51) in a distributed database system (Fig. 4, there are multiple database servers), at least one structured query language (SQL) statement (Paragraph 0018) into a first memory (The transaction log storing part 15 depicted in Fig. 6; Paragraph 0040, the database client receives an SQL statement from the client application and stores it in the transaction log storing part), wherein the distributed database system comprises a plurality of computing nodes (Fig. 4, there may be multiple database servers);
periodically obtaining (Paragraph 0003 indicates that conventional databases operate continuously), by a first computing node (Figs. 4 and 6, one of the database servers 20), the at least one SQL statement from the first memory (Paragraph 0027, an SQL statement is issued to server 20a), wherein the first computing node is any computing node in the plurality of computing nodes (Fig. 4, there are multiple database servers 20);
for each time the at least one SQL statement is obtained, executing, by the first computing node, the at least one SQL statement to obtain an execution result, wherein the execution result comprises state information of the first computing node (Paragraph 0027, upon receiving a statement from the database client, the server executes an updating process, then returns a response indicating committing is successfully completed to the client) and
writing, by the first computing node, the execution result into a second memory by performing a write operation (Paragraph 0040, the transmitting and receiving component 19 receives a response to the processing request to the database client), wherein the second memory is in the first management node (Fig. 6, the transmitting and receiving part is on the client 10).
Ohkawa does not expressly teach that the memories are RDMA memories, nor that the specified write operations are one-sided RDMA write operations (Ohkawa teaches the use of RDMA in paragraph 0021. However, it is used to connect servers and information control devices, rather than the clients and the servers. The Examiner acknowledges the information control devices of Ohkawa are similar in purpose to the claimed management nodes, but notes the claimed SQL-related functions are performed by the clients of Ohkawa).
Huang teaches a database system wherein clients are connected to the servers via RDMA (Page 775, left column), and that RDMA operations are one-sided (Page 776, top of left column, RDMA access allows software to read or update memory without involvement on the remote side).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention that the network 81 of Ohkawa connecting the clients and servers could be a network that utilizes RDMA as taught by Huang. It would be obvious because Ohkawa has already demonstrated a use of RDMA (Ohkawa paragraph 0021), and because RDMA provides the benefits of increased throughput and lower latency (Huang page 774 right column).
Regarding claim 2, Ohkawa in view of Huang teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein the first RDMA memory is in the first management node (Ohkawa Fig. 6, the transaction log storing part is in the client); and
wherein the periodically obtaining, by a first computing node, the at least one SQL statement from the RDMA memory comprises:
reading, by the first computing node, the at least one SQL statement from the first RDMA memory by periodically performing a one-sided RDMA read operation (Huang page 779 top of left column, to implement RDMA communication for a database, helper threads receive messages at their endpoints. This is a one-sided communication because it is an RDMA communication).
Regarding claim 12, Ohkawa teaches that the nodes comprise processors and memories (Paragraph 0034).
Claims 12 and 13 otherwise recite similar language to claims 1 and 2 and are similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 20, Ohkawa teaches a non-transitory computer program product (Paragraph 0079).
Claim 20 otherwise recites similar language to claim 1 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ohkawa in view of Huang as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of IBM Informix (NPL, The SQL statement cache, cited in previous action).
Ohkawa in view of Huang teaches the method according to claim 1, but does not explicitly teach the scenario where a computing node receives the same SQL statement more than once.
IBM Informix teaches, if it is not the first time that a computing node obtains an SQL statement, obtaining executable code of the SQL statement and executing, by the computing node, the executable code to obtain the execution result (Identical SQL statements that are executed repeatedly are buffered and reused).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art that the database system used in Ohkawa in view of Huang would employ a statement cache similar to the one taught by IBM Informix. It would be obvious because it can improve performance in applications that execute similar statements repeatedly (IBM Informix).
Claim 19 recites similar language to claim 8 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 9 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ohkawa in view of Huang as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Teradata Manager (NPL, Heartbeart Query – Performance Tuning, cited in previous action).
Regarding claim 9, Ohkawa in view of Huang teaches the method according to claim 1.
Ohkawa in view of Huang does not expressly teach the method according to claim 1, wherein the state information of the first computing node comprises a first timestamp, and the first timestamp indicates system time at which the first computing node obtains the execution result; and
wherein the method further comprises:
determining, by the first management node, a time difference between the system time indicated by the first timestamp and current system time of the first management node; and
if the time difference exceeds a time difference threshold, determining, by the first management node, that the first computing node is faulty.
Teradata Manager teaches using SQL statements as a heartbeat, wherein the state information of the first computing node comprises a first timestamp, and the first timestamp indicates system time at which the first computing node obtains the execution result (Teradata Manager logs the start and end times of the execution); and
determining, by the first management node, a time difference between the system time indicated by the first timestamp and current system time of the first management node (The system can measure response time); and
if the time difference exceeds a time difference threshold, determining, by the first management node, that the first computing node is faulty (An alert is initiated if response time degrades).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention that the SQL statements of Ohkawa in view of Huang could be used as a heartbeat mechanism as taught by Teradata Manager, through a simple substitution of the fault detection heartbeat of Ohkawa paragraph 0033 with the SQL heartbeat system of Teradata Manager. The result of the substitution would be predictable because Ohkawa demonstrates that a fault interrupts the response time of an SQL statement and can determine an inconsistency in an attempted SQL transaction (Paragraphs 0031/0032 and 0065 – 0068), and Teradata Manager teaches that SQL statements can be successfully used as heartbeats (“A heartbeat query can be any SQL statement run at specific intervals whose response time is being monitored”). Heartbeat SQL queries advantageously monitor the state of the system and detect failures (Teradata Manager), which follows the method of Ohkawa detecting faults by heartbeat (Ohkawa paragraph 0033).
Regarding claim 21, Ohkawa in view of Huang teaches the method according to claim 1.
Ohkawa in view of Huang does not teach the method according to claim 1, wherein a cycle of obtaining the at least one SQL statement from the first RDMA memory is a preset cycle.
Teradata Manager teaches SQL statements that are obtained in a preset cycle (“A heartbeat query can be any SQL statement run at specific intervals whose response time is being monitored”, “[System heartbeat queries] are more useful when run frequently (for example 5-10 mins)”, “[Production heartbeat queries] are run less frequently (for example 20-60 mins)”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention that the SQL statements of Ohkawa in view of Huang could be obtained in a preset cycle, through a simple substitution of the fault detection heartbeat of Ohkawa paragraph 0033 with the SQL heartbeat system of Teradata Manager. The result of the substitution would be predictable because Ohkawa demonstrates that a fault interrupts the response time of an SQL statement and can determine an inconsistency in an attempted SQL transaction (Paragraphs 0031/0032 and 0065 – 0068), and Teradata Manager teaches that SQL statements can be successfully used as heartbeats (“A heartbeat query can be any SQL statement run at specific intervals whose response time is being monitored”). Heartbeat SQL queries advantageously monitor the state of the system and detect failures (Teradata Manager), which follows the method of Ohkawa detecting faults by heartbeat (Ohkawa paragraph 0033).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3 – 7, 10, 11, and 14 – 18 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.
A statement of reasons for the allowability of claims 3 – 7, 10, 11 and 14 – 18 can be found in the Office action mailed May 21, 2026.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Branda et al. (US Patent Application Publication 2007/0198524) teaches system including a heartbeat signal implemented using SQL statements.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRYAN PAI SONG HUANG whose telephone number is (571)272-0510. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 11:30 AM - 8:30 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, ASHISH THOMAS can be reached at (571) 272-0631. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/B.P.H./Examiner, Art Unit 2114
/JOSEPH O SCHELL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2114
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