Resource effective incremental updating of a remote client with events which occurred via a cloud-enabled platform

• US 8,990,307 B2
• Filed: 06/15/2012
• Issued: 03/24/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Box Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Box Incorporated
• Inventors: Barreto, Tomas, Mand, Arshdeep, Spielberg, Miles, Mackenzie, David, Ghods, Sam
• Primary Examiner(s): Chang, Jungwon
• Application Number:
  US13/524,501
• Publication Number:
  US 20130124458A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,012 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709216-217, 709/205, 709/248, 707/201, 707/610, 707/202, 707/203, 707/2, 707/758, 1/1, 715/753
• 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 incrementally notifying a remote client of updates in a cloud-enabled platform for each remote client associated with a collaborator are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a method, which may be implemented on a system, for detecting an action in the cloud-enabled platform and effectuating a data change as a result of the action in a first database, creating an action log entry from the action, identifying the collaborator of the user'"'"'s in the cloud-enabled platform, whose remote client is to be synchronized with the data change as an update, and/or writing the action represented by the action log entry to a second database into a queue to by read by the remote client of the collaborator.

Claims

1. A method for incrementally notifying remote clients of updates in a cloud-enabled platform, wherein each of the remote clients is associated with a collaborator, the method, comprising:

detecting an action in the cloud-enabled platform and effectuating a data change as a result of the action in a first database;

from the action, creating an action log entry in an action log;

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

wherein, the action log entry represents the action identified by the event type identifier;

identifying a first collaborator in the cloud-enabled platform associated with a remote client to be synchronized with the data change as an update;

determining whether to write the action to a second database for the remote client based on an action type or a client type;

when the determination is made to write the action, writing the action represented by the action log entry to a queue in the second database to be read by the remote client associated with the first collaborator.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein, the action is written to the queue of the second database as a part of a batch of recently occurred actions to be written to queues for multiple collaborators.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein, number of actions in the batch is dynamically determined.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein, the client type indicates a synchronization client, a mobile client, or a web-based interface client to access the cloud-enabled platform.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein, the client type associated with the queue is a synchronization client;

wherein, the first collaborator utilizes multiple remote clients, each of the synchronization client type;

wherein, each of the multiple remote clients read from the queue at locations relevant to the individual remote client.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein, each of the multiple remote clients individually tracks a location in the queue from which each previously read.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein, the queue is specific to a client type of the remote client.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein, the remote client updates only the action without updating other actions which have previously been updated at the remote client.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein, the remote client associated with the client type is able to read from the queue such that the remote client is updated to reflect the action.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein, the query is associated with a timing parameter specified by the remote client such that the updates that are synchronized to the remote client include actions which are more recent than a time referenced by the timing parameter.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein, the query is associated with a parameter specified by the remote client such that the updates that are synchronized to the remote client include actions which are written to the queue after a location referenced by the parameter.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein, the remote client sends a query to the second database for synchronization of the updates specific to the first collaborator.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein, the remote client associated with the first collaborator reads from the queue in the second database for synchronization.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein, the action log entry is created in the action log in the first database, same as the data change, to enable rollback to previous versions before the data change was effectuated.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein, the storage lifetime associated with a queue for a desktop synchronization client is longer than the storage lifetime for a queue associated with a web-based browser client.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein, the second database is a distributed database cluster.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein, the queue in the second database is associated with a storage lifetime to ensure durability requirements associated with the client type.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising, writing the action to a second queue for a web-application interface to the cloud-enabled platform.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising, writing the action to a third queue for an audit log.

20. A method for delivering an ordered sequence of events in a cloud-enabled collaboration platform, 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, each log entry in the action log is associated with an event type identifier and a revision identifier, and represents an event identified by the event type identifier in the cloud-enabled collaboration platform;

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

determining whether to write the event to a distributed database for the collaborator based on action type or a client type;

when the determination is made to write the action, writing the event into a queue in a distributed database cluster to be read by one or more clients associated with the collaborator.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein, the queue in a distributed database cluster is specific to a client or a client category type used by the collaborator for accessing the cloud-enabled collaboration platform.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein, each log entry is further associated with a user identifier, wherein, the log entries are sorted based on the user identifiers.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein, the user identifier is associated with a user who owns an item on which an action performed by the event acts on.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein, the user identifier is associated with a user who owns an item with which the event relates.

25. The method of claim 20, wherein, the client reads from the queue in the distributed database cluster to obtain incremental updates in the cloud-enabled collaboration platform from the events logged in the action log.

26. The method of claim 20, wherein the revision identifier of a given event is used by the client for conflict resolution.

27. The method of claim 20, wherein, each log entry is associated with a unique identifier, and wherein, each log entry is entered in the action log in an order in which an associated action occurred in the cloud-enabled collaboration platform;

wherein, each log entry is created from a file entry stored in the data repository.

28. A system for incrementally notifying remote clients of updates in a cloud-based service, wherein each of the remote clients is associated with a collaborator, the system, comprising:

a processor;

a memory unit having instructions stored thereon that when executed by the processor, cause the system to;

detect an action in the cloud-based service;

effectuate a data change as a result of the action in a first database;

create an action log entry from the action in an action log;

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

wherein, the action log entry represents the action identified by the event type identifier;

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

determine whether to write the action to a second database for the remote client based on an action type or a client type;

when the determination is made to write the action, write the action represented by the action log entry to a second database into a queue to be read by the remote client associated with the first collaborator.