Maintaining time-date information for syncing low fidelity devices

• US 20050246400A1
• Filed: 04/20/2005
• Published: 11/03/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Starbuck, Bryan T.
• Granted Patent: US 7,620,663 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/27 Replication, distribution or synchronisation of data between databases or within a distributed database system; Distributed database system architectures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/275 Synchronous replication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/966 Distributed
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99952 Coherency, e.g. same view to multiple users
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99954 Version management

Abstract

Generally, the present invention provides for a distributed computing system that is capable of associating time-date information with a property value in the database. The distributed computing system has a device that stores properties in a database without corresponding time-date fields, and thus is considered a low fidelity or legacy device. Example embodiments provide that time-date information corresponding to remote property values can be identified and formatted in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system. The formatted time-date information is sent to the remote database for storage in a field associated with the remote property values. The formatted time-date information can then subsequently be used in resolving conflicts between property values.

Claims

1. In a distributed computing system having a device that stores properties in a database without a corresponding time-date field, a method of associating time-date information with a property value in the database, the method comprising the acts of:

identifying, at a local machine, time-date information corresponding to one or more remote property values in a remote database at a remote device that stores properties without a corresponding time-date field;

formatting, at the local machine, the identified time-date information in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system; and

sending, by the local machine, the formatted time-date information to the remote database at the remote device for storage in a field that is not reserved for storing time-date information and is associated with the one or more remote property values.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the standard format is a uniform resource identifier.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the uniform resource identifier is a uniform resource locator parsed into segments, each segment including a property identifier, a representation of one of the one or more property values and a representation of the time-date information corresponding to the one of the one or more property values.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the representation of the one of the one or more property values is a hash of the one of the one or more property values.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the field associated with the one or more remote property values is a note field.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the field associated with the one or more remote property values is an unused field.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more property values are a subset of a total number of associated property values, and the one or more property values are selected to have the identified time-date information formatted in the standard format based on values associated with the time-date information.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein a remaining portion of property values from the total number of property values not selected are represented in the field associated with the one or more remote property values by a combined representation value, the combined representation value having associated time-date information based on time-date information for the remaining portion of property values.

5. (canceled)

10. (canceled)

11. (canceled)

12. In a distributed computing system having a device that stores properties in a database without a corresponding time-date field, a method of associating time-date information with a property value in the database, the method comprising the acts of:

receiving, from a local machine, formatted time-date information associated with the one or more property values, the formatted time-date information formatted in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system; and

storing, at a remote device, the formatted time-date information in a database field that is not reserved for storing time-date information and is associated with the one or more property values such that the formatted time-date information can be utilized to resolve data conflicts involving the one or more property values.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising the acts of:

changing at least one of the one or more property values;

identifying the formatted time data information as being associated with the one or more property values; and

updating the formatted time-date information in the database field in accordance with the changed at least one of the one or more property values.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein a user of the remote device made the change.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein a user of a local machine made the change, the local machine storing unformatted time-date information properties associated with the one or more property values in a database with a corresponding time-date field.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein the standard format is a uniform resource identifier, and wherein the uniform resource identifier is a uniform resource locator parsed into segments, each segment including a property identification, a representation of one of the one or more property values and a representation of the time-date information corresponding to the one of the one or more property values.

22. The method of claim 12, wherein the one or more property values are a subset of a total number of associated property values, and the one or more property values are selected to have the identified time-date information formatted in the standard format based on values associated with the time-date information, and wherein a remaining portion of property values from the total number of property values not selected are represented in the field associated with the one or more remote property values by a combined representation value, the combined representation having associated time-date information based on time-date information for the remaining portion of property values.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein the values associated with the time-date information for the one or more property values are most recent time-date values, and wherein the time-date information associated with the combined representation is one or more of a most recent time-date value or an oldest time-date value associated with the remaining portion of property values.

17. (canceled)

18. (canceled)

19. (canceled)

20. (canceled)

21. (canceled)

23. (canceled)

25. (canceled)

26. (canceled)

27. (canceled)

28. (canceled)

29. (canceled)

30. (canceled)

31. (canceled)

32. (canceled)

33. (canceled)

34. (canceled)

35. A computer program product for use in a distributed computing system having a device that stores properties in a database without a corresponding time-date field, the computer program product for implementing a method of resolving a data conflict between devices in the distributed computing system, the computer program product comprising one or more computer readable media having stored thereon computer executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, can cause the distributed computing system to perform the following:

receiving, at a local machine, a remote property value for a remote property and corresponding remote time-date information from a database at a remote device without a corresponding time-date field reserved for storing time-date information, the remote time-date information formatted in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system;

detecting, at the local machine, a conflict between the remote property value and a corresponding local property value;

parsing, at the local machine, the remote time-date information according to the standard format to identify a remote time and date, the remote time and date indicating when the remote property value was changed;

comparing the remote time and date to a local time and date, the local time and data indicated when the one or more local property values were changed; and

resolving the conflict based on the results of the comparison.

36. The computer program product of claim 35, wherein the standard format is a uniform resource identifier.

37. The computer program product of claim 36, wherein the uniform resource identifier is a uniform resource locator parsed into segments, one of the segments including a property identification corresponding to the remote property value, a remote representation of the remote property value and a representation of the time-date information corresponding to the remote property value.

38. The computer program product of claim 37, wherein the remote representation of the remote property value is a hash of the remote property value.

39. (canceled)

40. The computer program product of claim 39, further comprising the acts of:

generating a local representation of the remote property from the remote property value;

comparing the remote representation to the local representation; and

determining, based on the comparison, the remote property value has not changed after the remote representation was generated.