Ex Parte Chiang et alDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardMay 24, 201914581797 - (D) (P.T.A.B. May. 24, 2019) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 14/581,797 12/23/2014 26890 7590 JAMES M. STOVER TERADATA US, INC. P.O. Box 190 Englewood, OH 45322 05/29/2019 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Kuorong Chiang UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www .uspto.gov ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14-1057 1873 EXAMINER SAMARA, HUSAM TURK! ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2161 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/29/2019 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 following e-mail address(es): michelle. boldman @teradata.com j ames.stover@teradata.com td.uspto@outlook.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte KUORONG CHIANG, CHUCHU WU, and WEI TANG Appeal2018-008099 Application 14/581,797 1 Technology Center 2100 Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, MICHAEL J. ENGLE, and IFTIKHAR AHMED, Administrative Patent Judges. AHMED, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1, 3-14, and 16-22, which are all of the claims pending in the application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ). We REVERSE. Technology The application relates to large-scale Database Management Systems ("DBMS") and, more specifically, to query optimizers that provide a mechanism for efficiently processing a query against large-scale databases. Spec. ,r,r 1-2. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Teradata US, Inc. App. Br. 2. Appeal2018-008099 Application 14/581,797 Illustrative Claim Claim 1 is illustrative and reproduced below with certain limitations at issue emphasized: 1. A method, comprising: App. Br. 10. (a) maintaining, in a cache, historical query result metadata; (b) receiving, in the cache, a query condition on a column of a table; ( c) determining whether a selectivity value for the query condition exists in the cache; ( d) returning the selectivity value and a total number of rows for the table when the selectivity value exists in cache otherwise returning an entropy-based estimated selectivity value for the query condition and an entropy- based estimated total number of rows in the table. ( e) receiving, in said cache, additional query result metadata, after the query condition is executed against the column of the table, the additional query result metadata being actual values obtained after the query condition is executed; (f) determining whether to store the additional query result metadata, discard the additional query result metadata, or store some portion of the additional query result metadata in the cache; and (g) using the additional query result metadata or the portion of the additional query result metadata and updating an entropy-based estimation procedure that produces the entropy-based estimated selectivity value and the entropy-based estimated total number of rows when the statistics or the portion of the statistics are stored in the cache. 2 Appeal2018-008099 Application 14/581,797 Rejections2 Claims 1, 3-5, 8, 9, 11-14, 16, 19, 21, and 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the combination of Cheng (US 2009/0216709 Al; Aug. 27, 2009) and Markl (V. Markl et al., Consistently Estimating the Selectivity of Conjuncts of Predicates, Proceedings of the 31st VLDB Conference, Trondheim, Norway, 2005). Final Act. 2. Claims 6, 7, 17, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the combination of Cheng, Markl, and Abdo (US 2008/0052269 Al; Feb. 28, 2008). Final Act. 15. Claims 10 and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the combination of Cheng, Markl, and Chaudhuri (US 5,544,355; Aug. 6, 1996). Final Act. 18. ISSUE Did the Examiner err in finding that Cheng teaches or suggests "historical query result metadata," as recited in claim 1? ANALYSIS Independent claim 1 recites maintaining and using "historical query result metadata" in determining selectivity for a given query condition. The Examiner relies on Cheng for disclosure of this limitation, finding that Cheng discloses "[s]tatistics, and optionally other metadata [that] may be loaded into another store, such as a metadata cache 262, from the metadata store 260." Final Act. 3 ( citing Cheng ,r 24, referring to Fig. 2). According to the Examiner, "the query optimizer obtains the[ se] statistics ... in order 2 Our decision as to the § 103 rejection of claim 1 is determinative as to the § 103 rejections of all the claims. Therefore, except for our ultimate decision, we do not discuss further herein claims 3-14 and 16-22. 3 Appeal2018-008099 Application 14/581,797 to optimize the query execution plan for query execution." Ans. 17 ( citing Cheng ,r,r 20-24). The Examiner finds the use of these statistics in Cheng to be similar to that of the claimed "historical query result metadata," because the claimed metadata is also "used by the database management system query optimizer in order to optimize the query execution plan for query execution." Id. (citing Spec. ,r,r 19, 20). "Therefore, under broadest reasonable interpretation, the Examiner interprets 'historical query result metadata' as the statistics that the query optimizer accesses from the metadata cache as described in Cheng." Id. (citing Cheng ,r 21; Spec. ,r,r 16, 19, 20, 44). Appellants contend that the metadata cache disclosed in Cheng "stor[es] statistics obtained from database tables, whereas the cache recited in independent claims 1, 13, and 21 is populated with historical query results metadata obtained during query condition execution." App. Br. 8 (citing Cheng ,r 24) (emphases added). According to Appellants, Cheng's statistics may include data such as "the number of rows in a table, the number of distinct values in a column, the most frequently-occurring values in a column, [and] the distribution of data values in a column," but not historical query result metadata. Reply Br. 3 ( quoting Cheng ,r 2). Appellants argue that "Cheng makes reference to 'optionally other data' loaded into metadata cache 262, but provides no definition or example of this other data," and "[t]here is no teaching or suggestion in Cheng that the 'other data' loaded into cache 262 comprises historical query result metadata, as discussed in the specification and recited in the claims of the present application." Id. ( citing Cheng ,r 24). 4 Appeal2018-008099 Application 14/581,797 We agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not sufficiently explained how Cheng teaches or suggests "historical query result metadata." Although Cheng teaches "[s]tatistics, and optionally other metadata [that] may be loaded into ... a metadata cache" (Cheng ,r 24), there is no indication that this data includes "actual values obtained after the query condition is executed," as recited in claim 1. In contrast, Cheng appears to rely on statistics about the database itself or data in the database, not about any query results: Database query optimizers in database systems rely on statistics (for example, the number of rows in a table, the number of distinct values in a column, the most frequently occurring values in a column, the distribution of data values in a column, and the like) that characterize the data in order to choose appropriate query execution plans to retrieve data needed to answer queries. These statistics may be determined from an inspection of the tables of the database, or from a set of stored statistical values. Cheng ,r 2 ( emphasis added). The Examiner has not sufficiently explained how these statistics teach or suggest "historical query result metadata." Although Cheng discloses statistics that may be considered "metadata," we agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not shown how Cheng discloses that such metadata relates to "query results." Although we agree with the Examiner that the Specification "fails to provide a special definition for the claim term 'historical query result metadata'" and the term should be given its "broadest reasonable interpretation" (Ans. 17), we find that the Examiner's interpretation of "historical query result metadata" as broadly meaning "statistics" reads out the claim term's requirement that such statistics must relate to "historical 5 Appeal2018-008099 Application 14/581,797 query result[s]." The broadest reasonable interpretation "is an interpretation that corresponds with what and how the inventor describes his invention in the specification, i.e., an interpretation that is 'consistent with the specification.'" In re Smith Int 'l, Inc., 871 F.3d 1375, 1383 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (citing In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Suitco Surface, Inc., 603 F.3d 1255, 1259---60 (Fed. Cir. 2010)). The very portions of the Specification that the Examiner cites explain that "historical query result metadata" refers to "metadata associate[ d] with historical query results." Spec. ,r 16. The Specification further explains that "[a]fter execution, the optimizer receives the true statistics obtained from executing the query, and feeds the query result metadata back to the cache system." Id. ,r 20 ( emphasis added). The broadest reasonable interpretation of "historical query result metadata" is one that is consistent with these descriptions, even though the Specification fails to provide a special definition for the term. Here, it is not clear from the record before us that Cheng teaches or suggests maintaining or using "historical query result metadata," as recited in claim 1. The Examiner also does not rely on Markl as meeting this claim limitation. Accordingly, given the record before us, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1. DECISION For the reasons above, we reverse the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1, 3-14, and 16-22. REVERSED 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation