Ex Parte Petride et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 29, 2018

13831122 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 29, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 13/831, 122 03/14/2013 Sabina Petride 42425 7590 09/07/2018 HICKMAN PALERMO BECKER BINGHAM/ORACLE 1 Almaden Boulevard Floor 12 SAN JOSE, CA 95113 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. 50277-4030 3413 EXAMINER HOLLAND, SHERYLL ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2161 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/07/2018 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): usdocket@h35g.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex Parte SABINA PETRIDE, SAM IDICULA, and NIPUN AGARWAL Appeal 2018-002 7 59 Application 13/831, 122 Technology Center 2100 Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, JOHN PINKERTON, and BETH Z. SHAW, Administrative Patent Judges. SHAW, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL 1 Appellants2 seek our review under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a) of the Examiner's final rejection of claims 1-18, which represent all the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b ). We reverse. INVENTION Appellants' invention is directed to processing queries. Spec. ,r 1. 1 Throughout this Decision we have considered the Appeal Brief filed June 21, 2017 ("App. Br."), Reply Brief filed January 8, 2018 ("Reply Br."), the Examiner's Answer mailed November 8, 2017 ("Ans."), and the Final Rejection mailed November 18, 2016 ("Final Act). 2 Appellants identify Oracle International Corporation as the real party in interest. App. Br. 1. Appeal2018-002759 Application 13/831, 122 Claims 1, 7, and 13 are independent. Claim 1 is illustrative of the claims at issue and is reproduced below: 1. A method comprising: receiving, by a database system, a query comprising a group- and-aggregate operation on a relation, wherein the database system has access to persistent storage where the relation is stored; wherein the database system is configured to perform one or more operations with assistance of a second system comprising a plurality of compute nodes arranged in one or more hierarchies; storing an in-memory copy of the relation in the second system by loading portions of the relation from the persistent storage to the main memory of the plurality of compute nodes of the second system; wherein the second system does not use persistent storage for storing redo logs for the relation and wherein the database system maintains transactional consistency for the relation; computing a first cost of executing the query by the database system without the assistance of the second system; computing a second cost of executing the query by the database system with the assistance of the second system; based on the first cost and the second cost, determining whether to perform the query with the assistance of the second system; and when it is determined to perform the query with the assistance of the second system, performing by the database system: collecting and merging partial results from the plurality of compute nodes of the second system; determining blocks of the in-memory copy of the relation in the second system that are out of sync with blocks of the relation in the persistent storage; and after all of the partial results are merged, performing adjustments to assure transactional consistency by handling the blocks that are out of sync to maintain transactional consistency; and returning a final result of the query. (App. Br., Claims Appendix, 12, 13.) 2 Appeal2018-002759 Application 13/831, 122 REJECTIONS The Examiner rejected claims 1-18 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ I03(a) as being unpatentable over Chowdhuri et al. (US 2006/0218123 Al, published Sept. 28, 2006), D. Kossman: The State of the Art in Distributed Query Processing," 2001 ("Kossman"), and Chamberlin et al., "Dynamic Data Distribution (03) in a Shared-Nothing Multiprocessor Data Store," 1992. Final Act. 12. ANALYSIS Appellants argue the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1. In particular, Appellants argue the cited references do not disclose "wherein the second system does not use persistent storage for storing redo logs for the relation," as recited in claim 1. See App. Br. 10; Reply Br. 5-7. We agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not sufficiently explained how the cited portions of Kossman ( e.g., page 445) teach redo logs, or explained why the second system does not use persistent storage for storing redo logs for the claimed relation. The Examiner points to Kossman as the second system (Ans. 42), and points to Kossman's teachings regarding updates (Final Act. 15), but does not explain how these updates apply to the claimed "redo logs." Therefore, on this record, the Examiner has not shown sufficiently how Kossman teaches "wherein the second system does not use persistent storage for storing redo logs for the relation," as recited in claim 1. Accordingly, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 1, or of independent claims 7 and 13, which both recite commensurate limitations. The pending dependent claims stand with their respective independent claims. Because this issue is dispositive, we do not reach Appellants' other prior art arguments. 3 Appeal2018-002759 Application 13/831, 122 DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-18 is reversed. REVERSED 4