Background transfer service for applications on mobile devices

• US 9,560,405 B2
• Filed: 06/20/2011
• Issued: 01/31/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 02/14/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: McClure, Marc David, Gbadegesin, Abolade, Subbaraman, Chittur Padmanabhan, Yin, Jianping, Raastroem, Jorge I., Shaaban, Yasser, Noonan, Timothy Daniel, Jiang, Rachel, Torr, Peter John, Ghotge, Vishal, de Souza, Gregory Arthur, Hullumane, Pavan Rajamohan, Dragomir, Adrian, Miller, Darin, Donahue, Megan Galbraith
• Primary Examiner(s): SALAD, ABDULLAHI ELMI
• Application Number:
  US13/164,678
• Publication Number:
  US 20120209946A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,052 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 718/103
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/546 Message passing systems or structures, e.g. queues
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/233 Processing of audio elementary streams monitoring, identification or recognition of audio in broadcast systems H04H60/58
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4126 The peripheral being portable, e.g. PDAs or mobile phones
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/439 Processing of audio elementary streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6175 involving transmission via Internet broadcast-related systems characterised by the transmission system being the Internet H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/50 Service provisioning or reconfiguring
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/60 Subscription-based services using application servers or record carriers, e.g. SIM application toolkits
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0264 by selectively disabling software applications
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

The subject disclosure is directed towards a background transfer service that provides platform-level support for third party applications to queue data transfers to run in the background, including when the application is not running in the foreground. Applications may thus perform downloading and uploading tasks in the background; however the background transfer service manages the data transfer requests so as to limit each background application'"'"'s ability to interfere with foreground application operations, that is, by controlling resource usage according to one or more policies.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

at least one processing unit; and

a background transfer service implemented on the at least one processing unit and configured to run on a mobile device at a platform-level to control data transfers of a plurality of applications, the data transfers comprising data transfers from a first background application and a second background application, the at least one processing unit programmed to;

manage application requests for the data transfers based upon one or more policies that control resource usage of background application data transfers to limit interference with foreground application operations, wherein the one or more policies comprise one or more of the following;

a maximum number of outstanding transfers at a time, a data size-based limitation, a connection rule, a bandwidth limitation, and one or more conditions comprising;

other application data transfer requests, available cellular service, Wi-Fi availability, desktop pass-through availability, power state, battery power level, and a charging state;

prioritize a first data transfer for the first background application over a second data transfer for the second background application;

generate one or more notifications associated with the data transfers current progress; and

provide the one or more notifications to the plurality of applications that requested the data transfers.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising a download manager configured to make remote connections to transfer data to or from a remote source to satisfy a transfer request.

3. The system of claim 2 further comprising a data sharing service configured to one of move or copy one or more of the following:

data transferred from the remote source into isolated storage associated with the application, and data from isolated storage associated with the application for transferring the data to the remote source.

4. The system of claim 1 further comprising an application instance manager configured to provide to the background transfer service a notification related to one or more of the following:

application uninstall status, and license revocation or reinstatement status.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one processing unit is further programmed to:

receive information indicating that one or more of the first and second background applications are being uninstalled; and

cancel one or more of the first and second data transfer requests corresponding to the one or more first and second background applications being uninstalled.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein wherein the at least one processing unit is further programmed to:

receive information indicating that a license of one or more of the first and second background applications is revoked; and

pause one or more of the first and second data transfer requests corresponding to the one or more first and second background applications having the revoked license.

7. In a computing environment, a method performed at least in part on at least one processor, the method comprising:

transferring data on behalf of one or more applications including a foreground application and a first background application and a second background application that are in the background during at least part of the transferring of the data, wherein transferring the data further comprises;

receiving a first data transfer request from the first background application and a second data transfer request from the second background application;

prioritizing the first data transfer request over the second data transfer request based upon one or more policies that control resource usage of background application data transfers, wherein the one or more policies comprise one or more of the following;

a maximum number of outstanding transfers at a time, a data size-based limitation, a connection rule, a bandwidth limitation, and one or more conditions comprising;

other application data transfer requests, available cellular service, Wi-Fi availability, desktop pass-through availability, power state, battery power level, and a charging state;

queuing information corresponding to the first and second data transfer requests from the first background application and the second background application in a request queue based upon the one or more policies that control resource usage of background application data transfers; and

processing the information from the request queue.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising managing one or more of the first and second data transfer requests by determining whether one or more transfer conditions are met, and if not, moving the one or more first and second data transfer requests to a waiting state until the one or more transfer conditions are met.

9. The method of claim 7 further comprising managing one or more of the first and second data transfer requests by determining whether to allow the one or more first and second data transfer requests based upon a size of the data to transfer.

10. The method of claim 7 further comprising managing one or more of the first and second data transfer requests by detecting a slow transfer state by checking whether a transfer rate is below a threshold, and in response to detecting the slow transfer state, waiting for a changed condition before resuming the transferring of the data.

11. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

receiving information indicating that one or more of the first and second background applications are being uninstalled; and

canceling one or more of the first and second data transfer requests corresponding to the one or more first and second background applications being uninstalled.

12. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

receiving information indicating that a license of one or more of the first and second background applications is revoked; and

pausing one or more of the first and second data transfer requests corresponding to the one or more first and second background applications having the revoked license.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

receiving information indicating that the license of the one or more first and second background applications is reinstated; and

resuming the paused one or more first and second data transfer requests corresponding to the one or more first and second background applications having the reinstated license.

14. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

receiving information indicating that one or more of the first and second background applications has changed from a background application to a new foreground application; and

re-prioritizing at least one pending data transfer request of the new foreground application.

15. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

receiving information indicating that an application has changed from a foreground application to a third background application; and

re-prioritizing at least one pending data transfer request of the third background application.

16. The method of claim 7, wherein the second background application is tombstoned.

17. One or more computer storage devices having computer-executable instructions, which on execution perform operations, comprising:

receiving data transfer requests from a plurality of applications, the plurality of applications comprising a first background application and a second background application, the data transfer requests comprising a first data transfer request to download data on behalf of the first background application and a second data transfer request to download data on behalf of the second background application;

prioritizing the first data transfer request over the second data transfer request based upon one or more policies that control usage of background application data transfers, wherein the one or more policies comprise one or more of the following;

a maximum number of outstanding transfers at a time, a data size-based limitation, a connection rule, a bandwidth limitation, and one or more conditions comprising;

other application data transfer requests, available cellular service, Wi-Fi availability, desktop pass-through availability, power state, battery power level, and a charging state;

queuing information corresponding to the first data transfer request in a request queue;

processing the information from the request queue, including downloading data on behalf of the first background application into a request store; and

communicating with a service that has access rights to move or copy the data from the request store to isolated storage associated with the first background application.

18. The one or more computer storage devices of claim 17 having further computer-executable instructions comprising:

receiving a request for status information from one or more of the first and second background applications, the status information related to a status of the first and second data transfer requests associated with the requesting one or more of the first and second background applications; and

returning status information in response to the request.

19. The one or more computer storage devices of claim 17 having further computer-executable instructions comprising:

receiving a third data transfer request comprising an upload request to upload other data on behalf of a third application of the plurality of applications;

queuing other information corresponding to the upload request in the request queue;

processing the other information from the request queue, including communicating with a service that has rights to access the other data in a second isolated storage associated with the third application; and

uploading the other data on behalf of the third application.

20. The one or more computer storage devices of claim 17, wherein the isolated storage associated with the first background application comprises a local storage unique to the first background application that provides different access rights represented by one or more privilege chambers.