Centralized feed manager

• US 7,792,926 B2
• Filed: 11/06/2006
• Issued: 09/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Patel, Ashvinkumar P., Athey, Kevin, Robison, John
• Primary Examiner(s): Maung; Zarni
• Application Number:
  US11/593,365
• Publication Number:
  US 20070055779A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,401 Days
• Field of Search: 709217-219, 709/225, 709/226
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A method delivering content from a plurality of sources to a plurality of end servers through a central manager is provided. The method includes receiving the content from the plurality of sources at the central manager, formatting the content to a form usable by the plurality of end servers, creating a transaction generic to the plurality of end servers where the transaction includes a reference to a set of instructions for storing the formatted content, sending the transaction to an end server in the plurality of end servers, and calling the reference to execute the set of instructions where the set of instructions store the formatted content into the memory of the end server.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving content from a plurality of sources at a central manager;

formatting, by the central manager, the content received from a source of the plurality of sources, the formatted having a form usable by a plurality of end servers;

creating, by the central manager, a transaction for the formatted content, the transaction having a common format for all of the plurality of sources and including information identifying a set of instructions for an end server in the plurality to pull the formatted content from the transaction and store the pulled content into memory;

sending, by the central manager, the transaction to the end server in the plurality of end servers.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

calling, by the end server, the reference to execute the set of instructions to pull the formatted content from the transaction and store the pulled content into the memory, and

sending, by the end server, the stored content to a plurality of clients.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the transaction in a storage device.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the storage device is a cache.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising determining if the transaction is current.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein determining if the transaction is current comprises reading a flag indicating the transaction is not current.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

requesting prior transactions from the storage when the transaction is not current; and

receiving the prior transactions from the storage.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising discarding the prior transactions if the prior transactions are not needed.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein discarding the prior transactions if the prior transactions are not needed comprises comparing a prior transaction in the set of prior transactions to a last transaction received and discarding the transaction if the prior transaction was already received.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising reading in all the prior transactions into the memory.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the reference is a subject describing the content.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering the content at the central manager.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering the transaction at the end server.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein sending the transaction to an end server in the plurality of end servers comprises communicating between a central manager proxy and end server proxy.

15. A method comprising:

receiving, by at least one central server computer, a first content from a first source;

receiving, by the central server computer, a second content from a second source, wherein the first content and second content are in a different format;

formatting the first and second content;

creating, by the at least one central server computer and in accordance with a transaction format, a first transaction including the first formatted content and information identifying a first set of instructions to pull the first formatted content from the first transaction;

creating, by the at least one central server computer and in accordance with the transaction format used for the first transaction, a second transaction including the second formatted content and information identifying a second set of instructions to pull the second formatted content from the second transaction;

sending, by the central server computer, the first and second transactions to the end server.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

executing, by the end server, the first set of instructions associated with the first transaction to pull the first formatted content from the first transaction; and

executing, by the end server, the second set of instructions associated with the second transaction to pull the second formatted content from the second transaction.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising sending content pulled from the first transaction to a client.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising sending content pulled from the second transaction to the client.

19. A system comprising:

a central manager comprising at least one server computer, the central manager coupled to a plurality of sources and configured to receive content from the plurality of sources; and

a software process associated with the central manager, wherein the software process includes instructions for execution by the at least one server computer to format the content received from a source of the plurality of sources and create a transaction for the formatted content, the transaction having a common format for all of the plurality of sources and including information identifying a set of executable instructions for an end server in a plurality of end servers to pull the formatted content from the transaction and store the pulled content in memory;

wherein the central manager is configured to send the transaction to the one or more end servers.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising a transaction storage, wherein the storage stores the transaction.

21. The system of claim 20, further comprising a storing process designed to store the transaction in a format in the transaction storage.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the format comprises default, db, flat, conversation, file, and sports.

23. The system of claim 20, further comprising a catching up process designed to retrieve a set of prior transactions from the transaction storage.

24. The system of claim 19, wherein the software process comprises a replication software process designed to forward the transaction to the plurality of end servers.

25. The system of claim 19, wherein the reference is a subject that indicates the formatted content.

26. The system of claim 19, wherein the transaction comprises the formatted content.

27. The system of claim 19, wherein the transaction comprises the set of instructions.

28. The system of claim 19, further comprising:

a proxy associated with the central manager, and

a plurality of proxies associated with the plurality of end servers, wherein the central manager proxy and the plurality of proxies communicate to send the transaction.