METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CALENDARING REMINDERS

• US 20080215691A1
• Filed: 02/13/2008
• Published: 09/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/16/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: CHHATRAPATI, Rupesh, VENGADASUBBU, Meera, LAO, Louis, SOBOTKA, David, ZAESKE, Andrew, TREITEL, Richard J., CHESTER, Jon
• Granted Patent: US 8,108,436 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24547 Optimisations to support specific applications; Extensibility of optimisers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1093 Calendar-based scheduling for persons or groups
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1095 Meeting or appointment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/80 Management or planning
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/951 Calendar or scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

An electronic calendar includes such features as recurring reminders, dividing unpredictable work loads into equal pieces, template free parsing, a reminders scheduling algorithm to reduce spikes, dynamic delivery and recovery algorithms, methods for splitting the work load between controllers and workers and for monitoring progress, all within the context of a calendar architecture for a large enterprise.

Claims

1. An apparatus for optimizing recurring database queries, comprising:

a reminders service for queuing and dequeuing recurring queries; and

means associated with said reminders service for storing a probability hint with each recurring query;

wherein said hint optimizes a number of recurring queries that must be accessed to find all reminders to be sent during a time period.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, each said probability hint further comprising a hint heuristic that is specific to each recurrence type.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein each recurring query has a hint attached during queuing;

and

wherein a determination is made whether a reminder should be sent during dequeuing.

4. A method for optimizing recurring database queries, comprising the steps of:

providing a reminders service for queuing and dequeuing recurring queries; and

storing a probability hint with each recurring query;

wherein said hint optimizes a number of recurring queries that must be accessed to find all reminders to be sent during a time period.

5. The method of claim 4, each said probability hint further comprising a hint heuristic that is specific to each recurrence type.

6. The method of claim 4, further comprising the steps of:

attaching a hint to each recurring query during queuing; and

determining whether a reminder should be sent during dequeuing.

7. A method for dividing an unpredictable workload into equal pieces, comprising the steps of:

dividing up actions that must be taken during a given time frame into groups of substantially equal size;

assigning each group to at least one device, wherein a number of actions to be taken by said at least one device are no greater than said device can take within such time frame;

attaching a label to a description of each action, in addition to any details specified by a client and independent therefrom, at a time when a request for action is received from said client, such that all possible labels appear with substantially equal frequency; and

grouping actions to be taken in a given time frame according to said labels attached to them into groups of substantially equal size.

8. A method for delivering messages that are composed of standard reminder content and event-specific content, comprising the steps of:

storing all standard content for reminders in a set of template files;

specifying in each template file all standard content for a specific reminder; and

including in each template a set of directives that indicate where a substitution of event-specific content should occur.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising the steps of:

at runtime, loading a template file into a cache when it is first needed;

and pre-parsing said template file when said template is first loaded into said cache by dissecting said template into an array of hard coded string constants and variable names.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising the steps of:

assembling final reminder content by walking said array of hard coded string constants and variable names;

appending string constants to final message content; and

using template variable names as a lookup into a dictionary of key-value pairs for a particular reminder.