Predictive caching and fetch priority

• US 9,747,013 B2
• Filed: 08/23/2016
• Issued: 08/29/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/06/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dropbox, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Dropbox, Inc.
• Inventors: Kluesing, Daniel, Andersson, Rasmus
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, HIEP T
• Application Number:
  US15/244,582
• Publication Number:
  US 20160364119A1
• Time in Patent Office: 371 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0862 with prefetch
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0888 using selective caching, e.g. bypass
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/172 Caching, prefetching or hoarding of files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/602 Details relating to cache prefetching
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/6026 Prefetching based on access pattern detection, e.g. stride based prefetch
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence

Abstract

Predicting what content items a user finds important and sending those items to a cache on the user'"'"'s device at times when doing so will not drain resources and will not result in expensive data rates. Applying a ranking function that examines recency and other content metadata associated with the user'"'"'s content items stored in a synchronized content management system. Determining how much of a ranked list of content items to cache and deciding when is a good time to send content items to the local cache.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

presenting a graphical user interface of a computing device displaying a representation of at least one locally-stored file, the computing device having access to networked storage that includes a cloud-stored file that is a higher quality version of the locally-stored file, wherein the cloud-stored file has a greater quality than the locally-stored file; and

displaying a quality indicator associated with the representation of the at least one locally-stored file, the quality indicator indicating a relative quality score of the locally-stored file with respect to the cloud-stored file that is a higher quality version.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the quality score is a ratio of the quality of the locally-stored file compared to the cloud stored file.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the quality indicator is a graph representing the quality score of the locally-stored file compared to the cloud-stored file.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the quality indicator is a pie chart having a shaded portion equal to or less than the full pie chart, wherein the full pie chart represents the full quality of the cloud-stored file, and the shaded portion represents the percentage quality of the locally-stored file compared to the full quality of the cloud-stored file.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the graphical user interface displaying a representation of at least one locally-stored file, also includes a representation of a cloud-stored file that is not stored locally, and for the file that is not stored locally, there is no quality indicator associated with the representation of the file that is not stored locally.

6. The method of claim 1, comprising:

sending, by the computing device to the networked storage, an amount of free memory available on the computing device for caching one or more cloud-stored items, wherein each cloud-stored item has associated metadata;

receiving, from the networked storage, a subset of cloud-stored items from the one or more cloud-stored items based on a Fetch Priority score and an amount of available caching space on the computing device.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the Fetch priority score is calculated from at least the quality score.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the Fetch priority score has an inverse relationship to the quality score, the quality score being a ratio of the quality of the locally-stored file over the quality of the cloud-stored file, whereby the lower the quality of the locally-stored file with respect to the cloud-stored file, the higher the Fetch priority score.

9. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions stored on the computer readable medium that when executed are effective to cause a computing device to:

present a graphical user interface of a computing device displaying a representation of at least one locally-stored file, the computing device having access to networked storage that includes a cloud-stored file that is a higher quality version of the locally-stored file, wherein the cloud-stored file has a greater quality than the locally-stored file; and

display a quality indicator associated with the representation of the at least one locally-stored file, the quality indicator indicating a relative quality of the locally-stored file with respect to the cloud-stored file that is a higher quality version.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the quality indicator is a graph representing a quality score of the locally-stored file compared to the cloud-stored file.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the quality indicator is a pie chart having a shaded portion equal to or less than the full pie chart, wherein the full pie chart represents the full quality of the cloud-stored file, and the shaded portion represents the percentage quality of the locally-stored file compared to the full quality of the cloud-stored file.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the graphical user interface displaying a representation of at least one locally-stored file, also includes a representation of a cloud-stored file that is not stored locally, and for the file that is not stored locally, there is no quality indicator associated with the representation of the file that is not stored locally.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, comprising:

sending, by the computing device to the networked storage, an amount of free memory available on the computing device for caching one or more cloud-stored items, wherein each cloud-stored item has associated metadata;

receiving, from the networked storage, a subset of cloud-stored items from the one or more cloud-stored items based on a Fetch Priority score and an amount of available caching space on the computing device.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the quality indicator is a ratio of a quality of the locally-stored file compared to the cloud stored file.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein a Fetch priority score is calculated from at least the quality indicator.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein a Fetch priority score has an inverse relationship to the quality indicator, the quality indicator being a ratio of the quality of the locally-stored file over the quality of the cloud-stored file, whereby the lower the quality of the locally-stored file with respect to the cloud-stored file, the higher the Fetch priority score.

17. A system comprising:

a client device configured to store and cache local versions of files stored on a content management system, and to present a graphical user interface that displays a representation of at least one cached local version of a file and a quality indicator associated with the representation of the at least one cached local version of a file, the quality indicator indicating a relative quality of the cached local version of the file with respect to a cloud stored copy of the file that is a higher quality version; and

a content management system configured to automatically send a version of one or more files stored on the content management system to be cached by the client device.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the quality indicator is a graph representing a quality score of the locally-stored file compared to the cloud-stored file.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the quality indicator is a pie chart having a shaded portion equal to or less than the full pie chart, wherein the full pie chart represents the full quality of the cloud-stored file, and the shaded portion represents the percentage quality of the locally-stored file compared to the full quality of the cloud-stored file.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the client device is configured to send, by the client device to the content management system, an amount of free memory available on the client device for caching one or more items stored in the content management system, and

wherein, the content management system is configured to send to the client device to be cached, a subset of items stored on the content management system based on a Fetch Priority score and an amount of available caching space on the client device.