METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ATTRIBUTE ENCAPSULATED DATA RESOLUTION AND TRANSCODING

• US 20110178997A1
• Filed: 01/15/2010
• Published: 07/21/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/15/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sun Microsystems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Johnson, Darrin P., Moore, William H., Saxe, Eric C.
• Granted Patent: US 8,285,692 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/694
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/13 File access structures, e.g. distributed indices arrangements of input from, or output to, record carriers G06F3/06

Abstract

A computer readable medium having software instructions that, when executed, perform a method for preserving data stored in a file system with a plurality of files. The method involves determining whether storage capacity of the file system has reached a threshold level, wherein the threshold level is stored in at least one of a plurality of size-reducing policies, obtaining a criterion from the at least one size-reducing policy, identifying a subset of the plurality of files that match the criterion, accessing metadata of each of the identified subset of files, wherein the metadata of each of the identified subset of files comprises at least one option for reducing a size of the file, and performing a size-reducing action to reduce a size of each of the identified subset of files based on the option for reducing the size of each of the identified subset of files and the criterion.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium comprising software instructions that, when executed, perform a method for preserving data stored in a file system comprising a plurality of files, comprising:

determining whether storage capacity of the file system has reached a threshold level, wherein the threshold level is stored in at least one of a plurality of size-reducing policies;

obtaining at least one criterion from the at least one size-reducing policy;

identifying a subset of the plurality of files that match the at least one criterion;

accessing metadata of each of the identified subset of files, wherein the metadata of each of the identified subset of files comprises at least one option for reducing a size of the file; and

performing a size-reducing action to reduce a size of each of the identified subset of files based on the at least one option for reducing the size of each of the identified subset of files and the at least one criterion.

2. The computer readable medium of claim 1, further comprising:

monitoring file system events; and

performing the size-reducing action before the storage capacity has reached the threshold level based on the monitored file system events.

3. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the plurality of files comprise multimedia data.

4. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the at least one option for reducing the size of the file comprises at least one of downsampling and transcoding.

5. The computer readable medium of claim 4, wherein the file system comprises an interface that provides access to at least one size-reducing library comprising one selected from a group consisting of downsampling functions and transcoding functions.

6. The computer readable medium of claim 4, wherein downsampling of the identified subset of files further comprises:

eliminating at least one portion of data of the identified subset of files; and

providing a pointer referencing a remote copy of the eliminated data.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 6, wherein the remote copy of the eliminated data comprises a first snapshot of the data at a first resolution, and a second snapshot of the data at a second resolution.

8. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the metadata is stored as a file system attribute.

9. The computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein file system calls a kernel-level service to perform the size-reducing action on each of the identified subset of files.

10. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the metadata is stored as an extended file attribute.

11. The computer readable medium of claim 10, wherein an external user-land service is configured to access the extended file attribute and perform the size-reducing action on each of the identified subset of files.

12. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the at least one criterion comprises at least one selected from a group consisting of size of the data, age of the data, time of creation, type of file, and available file system storage capacity.

13. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the plurality of size-reducing policies and the at least one criterion are one of user-defined or system-defined based on an original file type.

14. A system, comprising:

a file system comprising a plurality of files;

a storage pool configured to store the plurality of files; and

a service configured to;

determine whether storage capacity of the file system has reached a threshold level, wherein the threshold level is stored in at least one of a plurality of size-reducing policies;

obtain at least one criterion from the at least one size-reducing policy;

identify a subset of the plurality of files that match the at least one criterion;

access metadata of each of the identified subset of files, wherein the metadata of each of the identified subset of files comprises at least one option for reducing a size of the file; and

perform a size-reducing action to reduce a size of each of the identified subset of files based on the at least one option for reducing the size of each of the identified subset of files and the at least one criterion.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the metadata is stored as a file system attribute.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the service is a kernel-level service operatively connected to the file system.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the metadata is stored as an extended file attribute.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the service is an external service with direct access to size-reducing libraries and the plurality of size-reducing policies.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one option for reducing the size of the file comprises at least one of downsampling and transcoding.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein downsampling of the identified subset of files further comprises:

eliminating at least one portion of data of the identified subset of files; and

providing a pointer referencing a remote copy of the eliminated data.