THROTTLING TO REDUCE SYNCHRONIZATIONS OF EXCESSIVELY CHANGING DATA

• US 20100312759A1
• Filed: 06/05/2009
• Published: 12/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/05/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: GROETHE, KARL MARTIN, Belk, Andrew Trevor
• Granted Patent: US 8,380,669 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/704
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/273 Asynchronous replication or reconciliation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/275 Synchronous replication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/50 Network service management, e.g. ensuring proper service fulfilment according to agreements

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention determine if a user preference or other piece of data is being synchronized too frequently. If the user preference is being synchronized too frequently, synchronization of the user preference is throttled to prevent it from synchronizing for some number of synchronization cycles. If the user preference rarely changes, the user preference is rewarded by throttling it less often.

Claims

1. A machine readable storage medium storing instructions which when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform a method, the method comprising:

determining that a piece of data is being synchronized too frequently;

in response to determining that the piece of data is being synchronized too frequently, disabling synchronization of the piece of data for a number of subsequent synchronizations, wherein the number of future synchronizations is based on a number of times synchronization has been disabled for the piece of data.

2. The machine readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein determining that the piece of data is being synchronized too frequently comprises:

determining that a value of a switch variable is less than a threshold, wherein the value of the switch variable is decremented by a decay value each time the piece of data is synchronized.

3. The machine readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein disabling synchronization of the piece of data for a number of subsequent synchronizations comprises:

setting a throttle flag indicating that synchronization of the piece of data is disabled;

setting a value of a switch variable to an initial value;

setting a value of a throttle-off decay value based on the number of times synchronization has been disabled for the piece of data, wherein the value of the throttle-off decay value decreases each time synchronization is disabled for the piece of data.

4. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the piece of data is a user preference and the method further comprises:

synchronizing the piece of data with the remote data processing system, wherein the remote data processing system is a web-based service.

5. A method comprising:

determining, by a local data processing system, whether a user preference has changed or has not changed;

determining whether a user preference is enabled or disabled;

if the user preference has changed and the user preference is enabled, decreasing a variable by a first value;

if the variable is less than a first threshold, disabling the user preference and setting the variable to an initial value;

if the user preference has not changed and the user preference is enabled, increasing the variable by a second value;

if the user preference is disabled, decreasing the variable by a third value;

if the variable is less than a second threshold, enabling the user preference and setting the variable to the initial value.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the third value is decreased by a fourth value each time the user preference is disabled.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

if the user preference has changed and the user preference is enabled, synchronizing the user preference with a remote data processing system.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the user preference is stored on the local data processing system.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the local data processing system is one of a smartphone, a personal digital assistant, a personal musical device, and a laptop computer.

10. A data processing system comprising:

a processor;

a memory coupled to the processor through a bus;

a network interface coupled to the processor through the bus;

instructions stored on the memory which when executed by the processor cause the processor to;

perform a periodic synchronization of modified user data items with a remote data processing system through the network interface,

identify a user data item that requires synchronization more than a threshold frequency,

disable synchronization for the user data item for subsequent periodic synchronizations, wherein the number of subsequent periodic synchronizations increases for each time that synchronization has been disabled for the user data item,

enable synchronization for the user data item after the subsequent periodic synchronizations have been performed.

11. The data processing system of claim 11 wherein the user data items are user preferences.

12. A machine readable storage medium storing instructions which when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform a method, the method comprising:

determining that a piece of data changes too frequently;

in response to determining that the piece of data changes too frequently, disabling synchronization of the piece of data for a first period of time based on a number of times synchronization has been disabled for the piece of data.

13. The machine readable storage medium of claim 12 wherein determining that the piece of data changes too frequently comprises:

determining that a change tracking value has passed a threshold, wherein the change tracking value is decreased by an amount each time the piece of data has changed after a second period of time.

14. The machine readable storage medium of claim 12 wherein disabling synchronization of the piece of data for a first period of time comprises:

storing an indication that synchronization of the piece of data is disabled;

assigning a default value to the change tracking value;

reducing the amount by which the change tracking value is decreased.

16. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 12 wherein the piece of data is a user preference and the method further comprises:

synchronizing the piece of data with the remote data processing system, wherein the remote data processing system is a web-based service.

15. The machine readable storage medium of 14 wherein the amount is reduced based on the number of times synchronization has been disabled for the piece of data.