MANAGING UPDATES AT CLIENTS USED BY A USER TO ACCESS A CLOUD-BASED COLLABORATION SERVICE

• US 20130124638A1
• Filed: 06/18/2012
• Published: 05/16/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Box Incorporated
• Original Assignee: David Mackenzie
• Inventors: Barreto, Tomas, Mand, Arshdeep, Spielberg, Miles, Mackenzie, David, Ghods, Sam
• Granted Patent: US 9,015,248 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/16 Combinations of two or more digital computers each having at least an arithmetic unit, a program unit and a register, e.g. for a simultaneous processing of several programs coordinating program control therefor G06F9/52; in regulating and control system G05B
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24565 Triggers; Constraints
• 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: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes

Abstract

System and method for managing updates at clients used by a user to access a cloud-based collaboration service are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a method, which may be implemented on a system, for storing a representation of the action to queues of clients associated with the user in a distributed database cluster based on an action type of an action performed by a collaborator of the user. The clients of the user are selected based on the client category and the action type of the action, to receive a notification as a result of the action or to perform a synchronization with changes that occurred as a result of the action.

Claims

1. A method for managing updates at clients used by a user to access a cloud-based collaboration service such that the clients are updated with actions performed by collaborators, comprising:

based on an action type of an action performed by a collaborator of the user in the cloud-based collaboration service,

storing a representation of the action to queues of clients associated with the user in a distributed database cluster,

wherein, each of the queues is uniquely associated with a client category of the clients associated with the user;

wherein, the clients of the user are selected based on the client category and the action type of the action, to receive a notification as a result of the action or to perform a synchronization with changes that occurred as a result of the action.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein, the client includes an instance of a web browser having loaded thereon a web-based client to access the cloud-based collaboration service.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein, the client includes an instance of a desktop synchronization client to synchronize content with the cloud-based collaboration service.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising, writing to the queues of the clients associated with the user, subsequently occurring actions in a time ordered fashion.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising, storing, in the distributed database cluster, additional representations of actions to additional queues of other clients associated with other users of the cloud-based collaboration service.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising, effectuating data change associated with the action.

7. A system for incrementally notifying a remote client of updates in a cloud-enabled platform for each remote client associated with a collaborator, the method, the system, comprising:

means for, effectuating a data change in a first repository as a result of an action performed by a user;

means for, creating an action log entry from the action;

means for, grouping the action log entry based on the user who caused the action to be performed;

means for, identifying the collaborator of the user'"'"'s in the cloud-enabled platform, whose remote client is to be synchronized with the file change as an update;

means for, writing the action represented by the action log entry to a second repository into a queue specific to the remote client of the collaborator.

8. A method for updating a client at a client device with events occurring in a collaboration platform, comprising:

querying a queue stored in a distributed database and specifying a location in the queue from which to read;

wherein, the queue that is queried is specific to client type of the client and is also specific to a user;

wherein, the queue includes entries representing each of a sequence of events which occurred in the collaboration platform that is relevant to the user,

reading the queue starting from the location such that previously occurred events which have been updated at the client need not be accessed prior to reading the portions of the queue with those events which have yet to be updated at the client.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising, updating the client device based on the events that occurred in the collaboration platform upon reading the queue.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising, storing another location in the queue from which to begin a subsequent read.

11. The method of claim 8,

wherein, multiple clients associated with the client device or different client devices of the user read from the same queue;

wherein, each of the multiple clients individually track a location in the queue from which to read to reflect updates relevant to the client device on which the client resides.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein, each entry is associated with an action type identifier of a given event.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein, each entry is associated with a revision identifier;

wherein, the client uses the revision identifier for conflict resolution at the client device.

14. The method of claim 8, wherein, the collaboration platform includes a cloud-based service and storage platform.

15. A method for asynchronous synchronization of an ordered sequence of events in a cloud-enabled collaboration platform with multiple clients for a collaborator, the method, comprising:

creating an action log having log entries in a data repository for events that occurred in the cloud-enabled collaboration platform,

wherein, a log entry in the action log is associated with an event type identifier and a revision identifier;

wherein, the data repository is a SQL database;

wherein, the revision identifier is derived from version trackers used by the SQL database;

wherein, the log entry represents an event identified by the event type identifier, in the cloud-enabled collaboration platform;

for each log entry, identifying a collaborator to be notified of the event represented by the log entry;

writing the event into a queue in a distributed database cluster to be read by one or more of the multiple clients.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising, writing the event into a queue in a distributed database cluster to be read by one or more of the multiple clients.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein, the data repository includes a relational database.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein, different portions of the ordered sequence of events are sent to different client types or different clients of the collaborator.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein, the client type includes a web-based client of the cloud-enabled collaboration platform.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein the client type includes a desktop synchronization client of the cloud-enabled collaboration platform.

21. The method of claim 15, wherein the client type includes a mobile synchronization client of the cloud-enabled collaboration platform.

22. The method of claim 15, wherein the client type includes an email notification client of the cloud-enabled collaboration platform.

23. The method of claim 15, wherein the client type includes an enterprise action log of the cloud-enabled collaboration platform.

24. The method of claim 15, wherein the distributed database cluster includes non-relational databases.

25. The method of claim 15, wherein the distributed database cluster is a write-optimized or optimized for sequential reads.

26. The method of claim 15, wherein the distributed database cluster is an Hbase cluster.

27. The method of claim 15, wherein, the event is written to the distributed database cluster as a part of a batch of recently occurred events to be written to queues for multiple collaborators.