System and method for managing collections of data on a network

• US 7,308,449 B2
• Filed: 02/03/2003
• Issued: 12/11/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: John Fairweather
• Original Assignee: John Fairweather
• Inventors: Fairweather, John
• Primary Examiner(s): Mofiz; Apu
• Assistant Examiner(s): Padmanabhan; Kavita
• Application Number:
  US10/357,304
• Publication Number:
  US 20030187854A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,772 Days
• Field of Search: 707/10, 707/103.R, 707/104.1, 707/201, 709/201, 709/203, 719/315
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/427 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4493 Object persistence
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 13/0825 the ejection arrangement being of the push-push kind
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/913 Multimedia
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/966 Distributed
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation

Abstract

The present invention enables the creation, management, retrieval, distribution and massively large collections of information that can be shared across a distributed network without building absolute references or even pre-existing knowledge of the data and data structures being stored in such an environment. The system includes the following components: (1) a ‘flat’ data model wherein arbitrarily complex structures can be instantiated within a single memory allocation (including both the aggregation arrangements and the data itself, as well as any cross references between them via ‘relative’ references); (2) a run-time type system capable of defining and accessing binary strongly-typed data; (3) a set of ‘containers’ within which information encoded according to the system can be physically stored and preferably include a memory resident form, a file-based form, and a server-based form; (4) a client-server environment that is tied to the types system and capable of interpreting and executing all necessary collection manipulations remotely; (5) a basic aggregation structure providing as a minimum a ‘parent’, ‘nextChild’, ‘previousChild’, ‘firstChild’, and ‘lastChild’ links or equivalents; and (6) a data attachment structure (whose size may vary) to which strongly typed data can be attached and which is associated in some manner with (and possibly identical to) a containing aggregation node in the collection. Additional extensions and modifications to the system are also specified herein.

Claims

1. A system for the creation, manipulation, persistence, and networked sharing of collections of strongly typed binary information comprising:

a processor;

logically connected to said processor, a one or more databases, wherein said one or more databases via an application programming interface store arbitrarily complex structures and cross references between said structures instantiated within a single contiguous allocation memory model and contains only internal relative memory references to said structures which allows operations involving said structures to be transparently echoed to/from a file or network server based persistent storage, wherein each of an alternative persistent storage mechanism constitutes one of a plurality of containers registered with said application programming interface;

logically connected to said processor, a run-time type system capable of manipulating strongly typed binary information with which said processor defines and accesses the strongly typed binary information;

logically connected to said processor, a client-server environment, wherein said client-server environment interprets the strongly typed binary information defined by said run-time type system;

logically connected to said processor and contained entirely within any instance of said one or more databases, and manipulated via said application programming interface, a one or more data aggregation structures, wherein said one or more data aggreiation structures include ‘

parent’

, ‘

child’

and ‘

sibling’

links; and

logically connected to said processor, a one or more data attachment structures to which the strongly typed binary information defined by said run-time type system is attached and which is associated with said one or more data aggregation structures.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising an API, logically connected to said client-server environment, wherein said API provides one or more functions for interpreting and executing manipulations on said data aggregation structures remotely.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein said API includes one or more functions capable of internalizing a non-memory based storage container to memory.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein said API includes one or more functions capable of automatically echoing all write actions performed on a memory based storage container that has been internalized to a corresponding external storage container.

5. The system of claim 3, said system further comprising a publishing system, wherein said publishing system is capable of publishing one or more data collections thereby permitting access to said data collections to one or more authorized clients in a distributed network environment.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein said publishing system is capable of storing client subscription information relating to said one or more data collections.

7. The system of claim 6, further comprising a notification system, logically connected to said publishing system, wherein said notification system uses said client subscription information to notify said one or more clients when changes are occurring to a server-based collection to which they are subscribers.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein said publishing system is capable of transparently affecting changes requested by said one or more clients that are subscribed to said data collections thereby facilitating automatic data collaborations between disparate nodes on the network.

9. The system of claim 2, further comprising a naming subsystem, wherein said naming subsystem supports the creation of one or more named tags that can be associated with one or more element nodes or with individual fields within any given one of said element nodes without in any way modifying the defined structure or type of any value held in said any given one of said element nodes.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein said naming subsystem supports the creation of one or more named tags wherein said named tags may be text based, numeric, or of arbitrary type.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein said API includes support for said named tags created by said naming subsystem such that a collection contents stored on said one or more element nodes can be organized or searched using said named tags.

12. The system of claim 2 wherein the collections are linked into a single logical group thereby permitting transparent distributed querying and parallel access.

13. The system of claim 2, further comprising one or more global scripts, wherein said global scripts perform one or more named logical actions upon execution, including predefined system actions.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein said global scripts are capable of performing one or more actions on any of an element node or data field associated with any said element node.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein said global scripts may be inherited via any said element node or a type hierarchy.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising one or more local scripts, wherein said local scripts are capable of overriding said one or more global scripts within a given process.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein said plurality of containers include one or more containers having a memory resident form.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein said plurality of containers include one or more containers having a file-based form.

19. The system of claim 1, wherein said plurality of containers include one or more containers having a server-based form.

20. The system of claim 1, wherein said one or more databases are created using a flat data model.

21. The system of claim 1, wherein said one or more data aggregation structures include structures having ‘

firstChild’ and

‘

lastChild’

links.

22. The system of claim 2, wherein said one or more data aggregation structures include support for types of data structures selected from the group consisting of:

stacks, rings, multi-dimensional arrays, queues, sets, N-trees, B-trees, lists, and arbitrary mixtures of these types of data structures.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein said API includes support for searching and sorting each of said types of data structures supported by said one or more data aggregation structures.

24. The system of claim 1, wherein said one or more data attachment structures is identical to said one or more data aggregation structures.

25. The system of claim 1, wherein the system further includes a memory management system, wherein said memory management system is capable of storing one or more of said data aggregation structures in a memory that was previously used by identical data structures, thereby maximizing memory efficiency and reducing memory fragmentation.

26. The system of claim 1, wherein the system further comprises a change tracking system, wherein said change tracking system tracks changes to field values in order to facilitate automated access from and update to external storage repositories, such as conventional databases.

27. The system of claim 1, wherein the collections store associations between one or more arbitrary data bytes to one or more data structures within the collections.

28. The system of claim 27, wherein said arbitrary data bytes stored in the collections cannot be accessed from clients of the collections.

29. The system of claim 28, wherein said arbitrary data bytes stored in the collections store security tags for restricting access to all or some portion of the collections.

30. The system of claim 1, wherein the collections further include embedded type information directly within each of the collections.

31. The system of claim 1, further comprising one or more defined annotations.

32. The system of claim 31, wherein said defined annotations include one or more arbitrary system defined annotations.

33. The system of claim 31, wherein said defined annotations include one or more application defined annotations.

34. The system of claim 31, wherein said defined annotations are associated with a network node or data field associated with said network node.

35. The system of claim 31, wherein said defined annotations may be inherited via a type hierarchy.