Method and System Using Reusable State Information for Synchronization and Maintenance of Data

• US 20100198784A1
• Filed: 04/13/2010
• Published: 08/05/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Serlet, Bertrand
• Granted Patent: US 8,332,352 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/610
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/178 Techniques for file synchronisation in file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1837 Management specially adapted to peer-to-peer storage networks topology management mechanisms of peer-to-peer networks H04L67/1042
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/219 Managing data history or versioning querying versioned data G06F16/2474; querying temporal data G06F16/2477
• 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

Abstract

A system for synchronization whereby metadata repository maintains information regarding the history and status of data items in a data repository. Data items are associated with states and such states changes (e.g. increment) in response to changes to the data items. History statements associated with the same states describe the changes in a generic enough fashion that multiple data items may be associated with a single state (e.g. if multiple data items share a common history such as that they were all edited by a user on the same device). The history repository is synchronized with other history repositories so as to reflect the states of data items on multiple devices. The synchronized history stores are used during synchronization to identify and resolve data conflicts through ancestry of data item history.

Claims

1. A method for maintaining data and metadata for synchronization, the method comprising:

creating first data on a first device and associating a first state with said first data;

creating a first history statement to reflect metadata regarding the creation of said first data;

associating said first history statement with said first state; and

creating second data on said first device and associating said first state with said second data.