Maintaining time-date information for syncing low fidelity devices

• US 7,620,663 B2
• Filed: 04/20/2005
• Issued: 11/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Starbuck, Bryan T.
• Primary Examiner(s): Fleurantin; Jean B
• Application Number:
  US11/110,585
• Publication Number:
  US 20050246400A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,672 Days
• Field of Search: 707 1- 10, 707100-1041, 707200-206, 709/236, 709/240, 709/248, 709/217, 709/219, 709/203
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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: G06F 16/275 Synchronous replication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/966 Distributed
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99952 Coherency, e.g. same view to multiple users
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99954 Version management

Abstract

Generally, the present invention provides for a distributed computing system that is capable of associating time-date information with a property value in the database. The distributed computing system has a device that stores properties in a database without corresponding time-date fields, and thus is considered a low fidelity or legacy device. Example embodiments provide that time-date information corresponding to remote property values can be identified and formatted in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system. The formatted time-date information is sent to the remote database for storage in a field associated with the remote property values. The formatted time-date information can then subsequently be used in resolving conflicts between property values.

Claims

1. In a distributed computing system having a device that stores properties in a database without a corresponding time-date field, a method of associating time-date information with a property value in the database, the method comprising the acts of:

identifying, at a local machine, time-date information corresponding to one or more remote property values in a remote database at a remote device that stores properties without a corresponding time-date field;

formatting, at the local machine, the identified time-date information in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system; and

sending, by the local machine, the formatted time-date information to the remote database at the remote device for storage in a field that is not reserved for storing time-date information and is associated with the one or more remote property values;

wherein the one or more property values are a subset of a total number of associated property values, and the one or more property values are selected to have the identified time-date information formatted in the standard format based on values associated with the time-date information, and

wherein a remaining portion of property values from the total number of property values not selected are represented in the field associated with the one or more remote property values by a combined representation value, the combined representation value having associated time-date information based on time-date information for the remaining portion of property values.

2. In a distributed computing system having a device that stores properties in a database without a corresponding time-date field, a method of associating time-date information with a property value in the database, the method comprising the acts of:

receiving, from a local machine, formatted time-date information associated with the one or more property values, the formatted time-date information formatted in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system; and

storing, at a remote device, the formatted time-date information in a database field that is not reserved for storing time-date information and is associated with the one or more property values such that the formatted time-date information can be utilized to resolve data conflicts involving the one or more property values;

wherein the one or more property values are a subset of a total number of associated property values, and the one or more property values are selected to have the identified time-date information formatted in the standard format based on values associated with the time-date information, and wherein a remaining portion of property values from the total number of property values not selected are represented in the field associated with the one or more remote property values by a combined representation value, the combined representation value having associated time-date information based on time-date information for the remaining portion of property values.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the values associated with the time-date information for the one or more property values are most recent time-date values, and wherein the time-date information associated with the combined representation is one or more of a most recent time-date value or an oldest time-date value associated with the remaining portion of property values.

4. A computer program product for use in a distributed computing system having a device that stores properties in a database without a corresponding time-date field, the computer program product for implementing a method of resolving a data conflict between devices in the distributed computing system, the computer program product comprising one or more computer readable media having stored thereon computer executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, can cause the distributed computing system to perform the following:

receiving, at a local machine, a remote property value for a remote property and corresponding remote time-date information from a database at a remote device without a corresponding time-date field reserved for storing time-date information, the remote time-date information formatted in a standard format parsable by one or more devices in the distributed computing system;

detecting, at the local machine, a conflict between the remote property value and a corresponding local property value;

parsing, at the local machine, the remote time-date information according to the standard format to identify a remote time and date, the remote time and date indicating when the remote property value was changed;

comparing the remote time and date to a local time and date, the local time and data indicated when the one or more local property values were changed; and

resolving the conflict based on the results of the comparison.

5. The computer program product of claim 4, wherein the standard format is a uniform resource identifier.

6. The computer program product of claim 5, wherein the uniform resource identifier is a uniform resource locator parsed into segments, one of the segments including a property identification corresponding to the remote property value, a remote representation of the remote property value and a representation of the time-date information corresponding to the remote property value.

7. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein the remote representation of the remote property value is a hash of the remote property value.

8. The computer program product of claim 7, further comprising the acts of:

generating a local representation of the remote property from the remote property value;

comparing the remote representation to the local representation; and

determining, based on the comparison, the remote property value has not changed after the remote representation was generated.