Ex Parte Hsieh

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 25, 2017

13842967 (P.T.A.B. May. 25, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
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
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
13/842,967 03/15/2013 Jonathan Ming-Cyn Hsieh 068784-8012.US01 5087
105483 7590 05/30/2017
Perkins Coie LLP- NYC General
P.O. BOX 1247
Seattle, WA 98111-1247
EXAMINER
HARMON, COURTNEY N
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2159
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/30/2017 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
following e-mail address(es):
patentprocurement @perkinscoie. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JONATHAN MING-CYN HSIEH
Appeal 2017-000204
Application 13/842,967
Technology Center 2100
Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, MICHAEL M. BARRY, and
JOHN R. KENNY, Administrative Patent Judges.
BARRY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Non-Final
Rejection of claims 22^42, which are all pending claims. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.
1 Appellant identifies the applicant, Cloudera, Inc., as the real party in
interest. App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2017-000204
Application 13/842,967
Introduction
Appellant describes embodiments of the invention as “[sjystems and
methods for checking for region consistency and table integrity problems
and automatically repairing a corrupted HBase[2] cluster.” Abstract.
Claim 22 is illustrative (shown here with dispositive requirements in
italics):
22. A method for maintaining table integrity of a
datastore table in a distributed data cluster that relies on the
datastore table for locating data, the datastore table having rows
and being partitioned into regions, each region having a start
key and a stop key for identifying which rows map to which
region, the distributed data cluster including (1) a number of
region servers, each region server maintaining one or more of
the regions and (2) a distributed file system (DFS) that stores
the data, the method comprising:
identifying, by scanning all rows in the datastore table,
whether each possible row in the datastore table maps to one
and only one region;
upon identifying that a particular row does not map to
one and only one region, determining that a table integrity
problem exists;
determining a type of the table integrity problem;
deciding a repair option based on the type of the table
integrity problem, wherein the repair option is to cause the
particular row to become mapped to one and only one correct
region, in consistency with the data stored in the DFS; and
resolving the table integrity problem by executing the
repair option.
App. Br. 17 (Claims App’x).
2 “HBase is a scalable, distributed, No SQL (Not-Only Structured Query
Language) datastore that supports structured data storage for large tables.”
Spec. 12.
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Appeal 2017-000204
Application 13/842,967
Rejections and References
All pending claims stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious
in view ofNaicken et al. (US 2006/0190503 Al; Aug 24, 2006) and Smith et
al. (US 2013/0218840 Al; Aug. 22, 2013). Non-Final Act. 3-29.
ISSUES
Based on Appellant’s arguments, the issues before us are whether the
Examiner errs in rejecting claims 22 and 33.3 See App. Br. 11—15.
ANALYSIS
In rejecting claim 22, the Examiner finds Naicken’s teachings for
identifying and fixing problems with database tables in “[a] replication
environment [that] has a first replicate comprising a source table on a source
server and a target table on a target server” (Naicken 117) teach the disputed
requirements of “identifying . . . whether each possible row in the datastore
table maps to one and only one region” and “ upon identifying that a
particular row does not map to one and only one region, determining that a
table integrity problem exists.” See Non-Final Act. 3—5 (citing Naicken
11 52—54, 66, 74, 78, 84, 85, 88, 89, 92, 100, Figs. 2, 5, 6) (also explaining
“[i]t is understood a region is a block” (i.e., a block of rows in a table)).
Appellant argues the Examiner errs in mapping Naicken’s “replication
source server” and “replication target server” to the recited “region servers.”
App. Br. 12. Appellant also argues the Examiner errs in finding Naicken’s
3 Claims 22, 33, and 42 are the only independent claims. Claim 42 includes
the limitations corresponding to the combined limitations of claims 22 and
33. See App. Br. 21—22 (Claims App’x). Appellant argues the patentability
of independent claim 42 and dependent claims 23—32 and 34-41 based
solely on the arguments presented for claims 22 and 33. App. Br. 15.
Except for our final disposition, we do not discuss these claims further.
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Appeal 2017-000204
Application 13/842,967
disclosure of repairing the error of erroneous extra rows in a target table
based on information in a source table (see Naicken 192) teaches or
suggests the recited requirement “upon identifying that a particular row
does not map to one and only one region, determining that a table integrity
problem exists.” Id. at 12—13.
We agree with Appellant. Naicken’s “replicated table” (Title)
architecture with redundant tables stored by the replication source and target
servers is antithetical to claim 22, which essentially identifies a table
integrity problem based on the existence of redundant rows.
Specifically, as indicated by Appellant’s argument, the Examiner
maps the claimed regions to Naicken’s replication servers. See Ans. 3
(citing | 52, Figs. 2, 5, 17). Each replication server stores a copy of the
same data. See, e.g., Naicken 110. Claim 22 requires identifying whether
each possible row maps to one and only one region, and then, if a row does
not so map, determining a table integrity problem exists. In Naicken’s
system of replicated tables stored on replication servers, as mapped the
Examiner, performing the steps of claim 22’s dispositive requirements
necessarily would invariably result in identifying a table integrity problem.
The subsequent execution of claim 22’s “repair option” would then
“resolv[e] the table integrity problem” by causing Naicken’s replication
servers to remove any redundancy. This, of course, is counter to the very
purpose of Naicken, and an ordinarily skilled artisan would accordingly
understand that the teachings of Naicken are incompatible with and contrary
to the dispositive requirements of claim 22.
Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 22.
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Application 13/842,967
Independent claim 33 includes requirements analogous to the
dispositive requirements of claim 22:
identifying, based on the information associated with the
regions, whether each available region is assigned to one and
only one region server; [and]
upon identifying that a particular region is not assigned to
one and only one region server, or that any information
associated with the regions from one location is inconsistent
with such information from another location, determining that a
region consistency problem exists[.]
App. Br. 19 (Claims App’x).
The Examiner rejects claim 33 on the same basis as claim 22. See
Non-Final Act. 7—10. Appellant argues, inter alia, the Examiner errs for the
same reasons as for claim 22. See App. Br. 8. For the reasons discussed
supra, we again agree. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s
rejection of claim 33.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we reverse the rejection of claims 22-42.
REVERSED
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