COALESCING AND CAPTURING DATA BETWEEN EVENTS PRIOR TO AND AFTER A TEMPORAL WINDOW

• US 20100169281A1
• Filed: 12/26/2008
• Published: 07/01/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 05/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: InMage Systems, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Kumar, Satish, Atluri, Rajeev, Shah, Jayesh
• Granted Patent: US 8,838,528 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/641
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/20 of structured data, e.g. relational data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24 Querying
• 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: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

Systems and methods of coalescing and capturing data between events prior to and after a temporal window are disclosed. In an embodiment, a method includes determining a temporal window based on one or more of a user data and an automatically generated data, coalescing data between events prior to the temporal window using a processor and a physical memory and capturing data between events after the temporal window. The coalescing data between events prior to the temporal window may be determined by a set of overlapping operations to a data set, wherein certain operations have non-overlapping sectors which are not coalesced. Shifting a data view around a recovery point through a direction-agnostic roll algorithm that may use a roll-forward algorithm to shift the data view to a time after the recovery point and/or a roll-backward algorithm to shift the data view to a time before the recovery point.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

determining a temporal window based on at least one of a user data and an automatically generated data;

coalescing data between events prior to the temporal window using a processor and a physical memory; and

capturing data between events after the temporal window.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the coalescing data between events prior to the temporal window is determined by a set of overlapping operations to a data set, wherein certain operations have non-overlapping sectors which are not coalesced.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising shifting a data view around a recovery point through a direction-agnostic roll algorithm that uses at least one of a roll-forward algorithm to shift the data view to a time after the recovery point and a roll-backward algorithm to shift the data view to a time before the recovery point.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising generating a coalescing policy to identify data to coalesce around a recovery point to decrease a storage requirement of backed up data.

5. The method of claim 4 further comprising storing the coalescing policy in a coalescing policy database.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising detecting a coalescing event using a coalescing policy database and a coalescing events database.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein a coalescing event is comprised of at least one of a user defined event and an automatically generated event.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein a coalescing event is stored in a coalescing events database

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining a variable quantity of data to be coalesced based on an algorithm.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the algorithm is affected by space utilization and a data consistency with at least one of a data prior to a recovery point and data after the recovery point.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising governing an age dependent data mechanism to coalesce data based on a coalescing policies database and a coalescing module.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein a coalescing policy affects a number of data points retained for a selected time period.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein a coalescing policy is altered by at least one of a repeated time interval, a system event, a configuration change, an access event, and an event module indication.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein a machine is caused to perform the method of claim 1 when a machine-readable medium embodying a set of instructions is executed by the machine.

15. A software suite, comprising:

a portion to determine a temporal window based on at least one of a user data and an automatically generated data;

a portion to coalesce data between events prior to the temporal window using a processor and a physical memory; and

a portion to capture data between events after the temporal window.

16. The software suite of claim 15 wherein the coalescing data between events prior to the temporal window is determined by a set of overlapping operations to a data set, and wherein certain operations have non-overlapping sectors which are not coalesced.

17. The software suite of claim 15 further comprising a portion to shift a data view around a recovery point through a direction-agnostic roll algorithm that uses at least one of a roll-forward algorithm to shift the data view to a time after the recovery point and a roll-backward algorithm to shift the data view to a time before the recovery point.

18. The software suite of claim 15 further comprising a portion to generate a coalescing policy to identify data to coalesce around a recovery point to decrease a storage requirement of backed up data.

19. A system, comprising:

a processor and a physical memory to determine a temporal window based on at least one of a user data and an automatically generated data;

a coalescing module to coalesce data between events prior to the temporal window; and

a recovery module to capture data between events after the temporal window.

20. The system of claim 19 wherein the coalescing data between events prior to the temporal window is determined by a set of overlapping operations to a data set, and wherein certain operations have non-overlapping sectors which are not coalesced.