Ex Parte Cherryholmes et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 28, 2017

12795135 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 28, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
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APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
12/795,135 06/07/2010 Lon Jones Cherryholmes BBS10-1001 1384
22835 7590 03/02/2017
PARK, VAUGHAN, FLEMING & DOWLER LLP
2820 FIFTH STREET
DAVIS, CA 95618-7759
EXAMINER
HICKS, MICHAEL J
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2165
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/02/2017 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
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PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte LON JONES CHERRYHOLMES,
CHANDRASHEKHAR M. VAIDYA,
GEORGE EDDIE BAILEY JR., and BRETT HAWTON
Appeal 2016-004148
Application 12/795,135
Technology Center 2100
Before, ALLEN R. MacDONALD, JOHN F. HORVATH and,
JOHN R. KENNY, Administrative Patent Judges.
MacDONALD, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2016-004148
Application 12/795,135
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—18, and 21—26. Final Act. 1. The remaining claims
have been cancelled. Id. at 2. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
Exemplary Claim
Exemplary claim 1 under appeal reads as follows (emphasis and
brackets added):
1. A computer system for creating a virtual database, the
computer system comprising:
[(A)] a memory;
[(B)] a processor;
[(C)] a mechanism configured to detect an input/output
(“I/O”) request, from a database management system
comprising a database, to a log file of the database;
[(D)] a mechanism configured to intercept the I/O
request;
[(E)] a mechanism configured to deliver the intercepted
I/O request to a cache file or, in the absence of a previous write,
to a backup file, wherein data in the backup file is different
from current data; and
[(F)] a mechanism configured to update the cache file,
thereby creating the virtual database while maintaining a
transactional consistency of the database and the virtual
database through Transact-SQL commit and rollback
operations.
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Application 12/795,135
Rejections
The Examiner rejected claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—18, and 21—26 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Chen et al.
(US 7,266,656 B2, issued Sept. 4, 2007) and Luetkehoelter {Pro SOL Server
Disaster Recovery, Chapter 2 “Making Database Backups”, pages 13—41,
2008, Apress).1
Appellants ’ Contentions
1. Appellants contend that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because Appellants disagree with the Examiner’s
finding (Final Act. 3—4) that:
[T]he operations surrounding servicing requests from the cache
and restoring the primary database may clearly be said to
maintain transactional consistency of the database and the virtual
database, as the virtual database and database are maintained in
a consistent state such that transactions are not dropped or missed
in the event of system failures (e.g. the transactions are
consistently recorded and available, such that requests may be
serviced, at all times during operation).
App. Br. 14. Appellants go on (App. Br. 15) to state that the term
“Transactional consistency” is known in the art, and argue Wikipedia states
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_consistency) that “Transactional
consistency is also frequently referred to as atomicity.” Appellants
conclude:
If a database includes incomplete transactions, and if the
incomplete transactions are not undone, then the database lacks
transactional consistency. In other words, merely by restoring a
1 Separate patentability is not argued for claims 2—5, 8—12, 15—18, and 21—
26. Except for our ultimate decision, these claims are not discussed further
herein.
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Application 12/795,135
database to a previous state by using just the backup data may
not be sufficient to achieve transactional consistency of the
database.
App. Br. 16.
2. Appellants also contend that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because:
Examiner avers that this passage in Chen discloses
maintaining transactional consistency of the database and the
virtual database using commit operations. Appellant disagrees.
In Chen, recovery of a database is performed when a
primary storage site fails. In case of such a failure an intelligent
staging agent keeps any updates after the failure in a log and they
are replayed to the primary site once the failure at the primary
site has been repaired. Note that merely by replaying the updates
to the primary site, does not ensure transactional consistency of
the database. For example, transactions that were completed but
not committed before the failure of the primary site are not rolled
back after the primary site has been repaired. The update
requests received after the failure cannot possibly perform a
rollback as the intelligent staging agent does not perform the
restore operation based on a log file of a backup. The intelligent
staging agent instead has its own log which is unrelated with a
log file of the primary database.
Therefore, Chen does not disclose or render obvious
creating the virtual database while maintaining a transactional
consistency of the database and the virtual database through
Transact-SQL commit and rollback operations[.]
App. Br. 17.
In Chen, replaying of updates applies the updates to the primary
site. Although the primary site is brought up-to-date after a
failure with the help of the updates, a presence of any
uncommitted transactions are not detected. Hence, the up-to-
date primary site is not transactionally consistent.
Note that a rollback operation is an atomic operation. It is
associated with a specific transaction. The “rollback” operation
rolls back a transaction to the beginning of the transaction,
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Application 12/795,135
whereas a restore operation restores a previous state of the
database. There is no guarantee that this previous restored state
would provide transactional consistency
In contrast to Chen, embodiments disclosed in the Instant
Application maintain T-SQL transactional consistency during
the database failure by supporting T-SQL commits and rollbacks
from the virtual database.
App. Br. 18-19.
Issues on Appeal
Did the Examiner err in rejecting claim 1 as being obvious?
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
arguments (Appeal Brief) that the Examiner has erred.
As to Appellants’ above contention 1, we disagree. Appellants’
argument introduces a Wikipedia definition of “transactional consistency.”
We do not find any relevance to this new definition. Rather, Appellants
have already defined this term in the Related Art section of the Specification
as
at any one instant in time, all data must be transactionally
consistent, meaning that at that instant in time all the work of
committed transactions has been applied, and any work of
uncommitted transactions which might have been applied are
undone.
Spec. 17, emphasis added. Further, Appellants have made explicit
statements as to what is known in the art as to transactional consistency
during backup recovery.
Recovery is performed as the final step in restoring a database
from backups, when a database is attached or when the server
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starts (for example, after a crash). Recovery ensures that a
database is transactionally consistent prior to bringing it
online. As previously mentioned, if a database is
transactionally consistent, all committed work is present and
any uncommitted work has been undone.
Spec. 115, emphasis added.
In Microsoft® SQL Server™, recovery is based on write-ahead
logging, which guarantees that changes are written to the log
before the corresponding data pages are written. The log always
defines the correct view of the database. Simply put, recovery is
the process of making the data consistent with the transaction
log at a given point in time.
Spec. 116, emphasis added.
Contrary to Appellants’ argument that Chen lacks transactional
consistency, we conclude that an artisan would understand Chen’s recovery
provides transactional consistency, as Appellants have defined the term.
However, as discussed infra, not transactional consistency based on commit
and rollback operations as required by claim 1.
As to Appellants’ above contention 2, we disagree to the extent that
Appellants argue Chen lacks “transactional consistency,” but we agree with
Appellants’ ultimate point that Chen fails to disclose maintaining a
transactional consistency of the database and the virtual database through
commit and rollback operations.
However, the Examiner presents an new alternative rejection analysis
in the Answer including new fact finding.
Luetkehoelter clearly discloses the use of T-SQL rollback
operations during a restoration operation, such as the restoration
operations utilized within the invention of Chen, which are used
to bring the primary site back online and up-to-date, or to a
consistent state (See Chen, Column 9, Lines 8-27). Examiner
notes that Luetkehoelter, Page 16, Paragraph 1 clearly states that:
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“ When a database backup occurs, only the actual
data and transaction log files are written to disk.
Committed transactions not yet written to disk
remain in the transaction log and are rolled forward
during the recovery process as the database is
brought back online. Incomplete transactions are
rolled back during recovery ...”
When taken in the context of Luetkehoelter, which is specifically
describing the use of T-SQL commands, it is clear that the
rollback operations referred to in this section are T-SQL rollback
operations. Examiner strongly asserts that the above described
process of a database recovery is consistent with the operations
performed in the art of Chen, wherein a backup is restored and
then transaction logs are replayed (See Chen, Column 9, Lines
8-27). As such, it is clear that the T-SQL rollback operations of
the claims are both disclosed by the art of Luetkehoelter and
incorporated into the process of Chen, when the references are
combined.
We agree with the Examiner’s new alternative rejection analysis, and the
Appellants do not dispute this alternative rejection analysis.
CONCLUSIONS
(1) The Examiner has not erred in rejecting claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—18,
and 21—26 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
(2) Claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—18, and 21—26 are not patentable.
DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—18, and 21—26 is
affirmed.
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No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
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