INTEGRATION OF UNSTRUCTED DATA INTO A DATABASE

• US 20090228429A1
• Filed: 03/05/2008
• Published: 09/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/05/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kamra, Vaibhav, Purtell, Michael J., Brjazovski, Arkadi, Diaconu, Cristian, Kumar, Rohan
• Granted Patent: US 7,958,167 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1865 Transactional file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/188 Virtual file systems

Abstract

The claimed subject matter provides a system and/or a method that extends transactional guarantees to unstructured data in a file system. A database engine, configured to retain structured data, can reserve a portion of the file system to store unstructured data to be managed by the database engine. A kernel component can associate a transaction with at least one stream that corresponds to the reserved portion of the file system. The association enables transaction based access to the reserved portion of the file system managed by the database engine.

Claims

1. A system that provides transactional guarantees with unstructured data, comprising:

a database engine configured to retain structured data, the database engine reserves a portion of a file system to store unstructured data that is managed by the database engine; and

a kernel component that associates a transaction with at least one stream that corresponds to the reserved portion of the file system, the association enables transaction based access to the reserved portion of the file system managed by the database engine.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the database engine generates the transaction.

3. The system of claim 1, the kernel component associates the at least one stream to the transaction via linking one or more handles corresponding the at least one stream to the transaction.

4. The system of claim 1, the kernel component monitors the at least one stream to determine if modifications have occurred.

5. The system of claim 4, further comprising a flush component that hardens the at least one stream if modifications have occurred, the flush component flushes at least one of a hardware buffer or hardware controller to ensure all modifications perpetuate to the at least one stream.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising a roll back component that abandons data written to the at least one stream upon failure of the associated transaction.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein structured data is data that conforms to a structure based at least in part on a database model utilized by the database engine.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein unstructured data deviates from the structure specified by the database model.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the database engine utilizes a claim ownership block to reserve the portion of the file system, the claim ownership block is an object that includes one or more fields that specify at least one of a volume that encompasses the reserved portion of the file system, a file path that indicates a location of the reserved portion in the file system or the database engine that employs the claim ownership block.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising one or more shares exported by the kernel component, the one or more shares provide entry points to the reserved portion of the file system.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising at least one client that accesses unstructured data retained in the reserved portion of the file system via the one or more shares.

12. The system of claim 1, further comprising an object model employed by the kernel component, the object model maintains the transaction, the at least one stream and the reserved portion of the file system.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the transaction includes a transaction model that enables synchronization between the database engine and the reserved portion of the file system such that modifications to structured data in the database and modifications to unstructured data in the file system can be joined within a single transaction.

14. A computer-implemented method that facilitates extending transactions to unstructured data in a file system, comprising:

provisioning a subset of the file system to store unstructured data managed by a database;

associating at least one handle to a transaction instance; and

managing the at least one handle based at least in part on a state of the associated transaction instance.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising flushing the at least one handle upon close processing of the at least one handle or if the state of the transaction is a pre-commit state.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein flushing the at least one handle is selective in that flushing is skipped if at least one of the following conditions hold true:

files associated with the at least one handle have not changed;

the at least one handle is a last reference to a file;

or

the at least one handle references a file that includes a subsequent reference within a same transaction.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising exporting a set of entry points that lead into the subset of the file system.

18. The method of claim 14, further comprising associating the at least one handle to an entry point within the set of entry points if the at least one handle originates from a remote client.

19. The method of claim 14, further comprising associating the at least one handle to a claim ownership block if the at least one handle originates from the database;

20. A computer-implemented system that facilitates employing transactions with unstructured data in a file system, comprising:

means for reserving at least a portion of the file system to store unstructured data on behalf of a database;

means for controlling access to files within the reserved portion of the file system;

means for managing the reserved portion based upon a transaction model of the database; and

means for committing modifications to the files within the reserved portion concurrently with modifications to structured data retained in the database.