Ex Parte Thiyagarajan et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 28, 201412043908 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 28, 2014) Copy Citation 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. 12/043,908 03/06/2008 Murali Thiyagarajan 50277-3293 6190 42425 7590 08/29/2014 HICKMAN PALERMO TRUONG BECKER BINGHAM WONG/ORACLE 1 Almaden Boulevard Floor 12 SAN JOSE, CA 95113 EXAMINER WITZENBURG, BRUCE A ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2166 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 08/29/2014 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte MURALI THIYAGARAJAN and PRAVEEN KUMAR ____________ Appeal 2012-002348 Application 12/043,908 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, BRUCE R. WINSOR, and JOHN P. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judges. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL SUMMARY Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1–5, 8–13, and 16, which constitute all the claims pending in this application.1 Claims 6, 7, 14, and 15 are cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 The real party in interest identified by Appellants is Oracle International Corporation. Appeal Br. 1. Appeal 2012–002348 Application 12/043,908 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants describe the present invention as follows: “The present invention relates generally to computing queries. More specifically, embodiments of the present invention relate to rewriting queries with a nested materialized view.” Spec. ¶ 1. Claims 1, 8, 9, and 16 are independent claims. Rejections on Appeal Claims 1–5, 8–13, and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ahmed (U.S. 7,233,944 B2, June 19, 2007) and Norcott (U.S. 6,334,128 B1, Dec. 25, 2001). See Appeal Br. 4; Ans. 4. Illustrative Claims Claims 1 and 9 are argued together, as are claims 8 and 16. Claims 1 and 8 are illustrative. Claim 1 provides as follows: 1. A computer-implemented method, comprising steps of: selecting, from among a hierarchy of materialized views, only first-tier materialized views that depend directly on a base table; establishing a set of candidate materialized views that consists only of the selected first-tier materialized views; based on a cardinality of a nested materialized view that is a descendant of a particular first-tier materialized view, selecting the particular first- tier materialized view from among the set of candidate materialized views even though the Appeal 2012–002348 Application 12/043,908 3 particular first-tier materialized view does not have a lowest cardinality among cardinalities of first-tier materialized views in said set of candidate materialized views; and based on said selecting, rewriting an existing query statement, which references said base table, into a rewritten query statement that references said particular first-tier materialized view instead of said base table; wherein said first-tier materialized view is a parent materialized view to another materialized view; wherein said method is performed by one or more computing devices. Claim 8 provides as follows: 8. A computer-implemented method, comprising: selecting a certain candidate materialized view from among a plurality of candidate materialized views, wherein each candidate materialized view of said plurality of candidate materialized views is associated with a nested materialized view at a final nesting level; wherein said selecting includes: (a) making a comparison of the cardinality of each respective nested materialized view at the final nesting level, and (b) selecting the candidate materialized view with the lowest cardinality based on said comparison; and based on said selecting, rewriting an existing query statement, which references a base table upon which a first-tier ancestor of the certain Appeal 2012–002348 Application 12/043,908 4 candidate materialized view directly depends, with a rewritten query statement that references the first-tier ancestor instead of the base table; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices. Issues on Appeal Appellants’ arguments in their Appeal Brief2 and Reply Brief present us with the following dispositive issues: 1. Do Ahmed and Norcott teach or suggest the limitation “selecting, from among a hierarchy of materialized views, only first-tier materialized views that depend directly on a base table,” as recited in claim 1? 2. Do Ahmed and Norcott teach or suggest the limitation “wherein said selecting includes: (a) making a comparison of the cardinality of each respective nested materialized view at the final nesting level, and (b) selecting the candidate materialized view with the lowest cardinality based on said comparison,” as recited in claim 8? ANALYSIS Issue No. 1 The first “selecting” limitation of claim 1 requires “selecting, from among a hierarchy of materialized views, only first-tier materialized views 2 Our decision refers to Appellants’ Appeal Brief, filed on June 9, 2011 (“Appeal Br.”), the Examiner’s Answer, mailed on Sept. 14, 2011 (“Ans.”), Appellants’ Reply Brief, filed on Nov. 8, 2011 (“Reply Br.”), and the original Specification, filed on Mar. 6, 2008 (“Spec.”). Appeal 2012–002348 Application 12/043,908 5 . . . .” In discussing Ahmed, the Examiner states that “Ahmed receives a query which can be broken down into various forms of subqueries from a query program and calculates the cost to execute each one based on the processing power needed and the cardinality.” Ans. 12. The Examiner finds that “[t]here naturally exists a set of interim views which are calculated from the base tables themselves . . .” and that “[w]hile Ahmed itself does not refer to materialization of these views,” materialization would have been obvious in view of Norcott. Ans. 13. The Examiner further finds that, in the Ahmed system, the “outer query remains persistent and inner queries are calculated for efficiency as being nested and un-nested at will” and that “[t]his creates an entire hierarchy of potential candidate views . . . including . . . (first-tier views).” Ans. 14. Finally, the Examiner finds “it is quite apparent that selection of first-tier candidate views is a natural subset of the query rewrite mechanism as all first tier materialized views are considered and related ones are selected as candidates.” Ans. 15. Appellants contend that “the Examiner’s reliance on Ahmed for generating interim views for each of the combinations is misplaced” and that, “even assuming Ahmed functions as the Examiner believes it does,” the limitation of “selecting only first-tier materialized views” as its candidate set is not met because, “for Ahmed to calculate costs for the possible orders in which the sub-queries could be applied, Ahmed would have to analyze the interim views of each combination for cardinality regardless of whether or not the view for that combination had previously been materialized.” Reply Br. 8–9 (emphasis omitted). Appeal 2012–002348 Application 12/043,908 6 We agree with Appellants. Initially, the Examiner has not shown that Ahmed generates all interim views. As noted by Appellants (Reply Br. 8), Ahmed uses statistical methods to estimate the initial cardinalities and these estimations are propagated through the various configurations of sub- queries through the use of filtering factors. See Ahmed, 5:62–6:11, Figure 2, 6:36–7:44. Once the semantically equivalent query with the lowest cost is chosen, that query is executed, in which event the interim views for that path are generated. See id. Figure 3, 8:1–30. Thus, the Examiner has not shown that Ahmed generates a “set of interim views” or an “entire hierarchy” of potential candidate views, including first-tier views. We also agree with Appellants (Reply Br. 8–9) that, even if the Examiner were correct in regard to Ahmed generating a set or hierarchy of interim views, the interim views of each combination would need to be analyzed, including the first-tier and all nested and un-nested views, regardless of whether they are materialized. Thus, this would not meet the “selecting” limitation because it requires selecting from “only first-tier materialized views.” Furthermore, the Examiner has not identified any teaching or suggestion in either Ahmed or Norcott for “selecting” only the first-tier views. Although the Examiner finds that “selection of first-tier candidate views is a natural subset,” the Examiner has not persuaded us that Ahmed or Norcott teach or suggest selecting first-tier views over any other views. Accordingly, we conclude that the Examiner has not shown that Ahmed and Norcott teach or suggest the limitation “selecting, from among a hierarchy of materialized views, only first-tier materialized views that depend directly on a base table,” as recited in claim 1. Appeal 2012–002348 Application 12/043,908 7 Thus, because the Examiner has not shown that the first “selecting” limitation of claim 1 is taught or suggested by Ahmed and Norcott, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 1 as obvious over those references. For the same reasons, we do not sustain the rejection of claims 2–5, which depend from claim 1, independent claim 9, and claims 10–13, which depend from claim 9. Issue No. 2 The initial “selecting” step of clam 8 recites “selecting a certain candidate materialized view from among a plurality of candidate materialized views, wherein each candidate . . . is associated with a nested materialized view at a final nesting level.” Claim 8 further specifies that the selecting step “includes: (a) making a comparison of the cardinality of each respective nested materialized view at the final nesting level, and (b) selecting the candidate materialized view with the lowest cardinality based on said comparison.” In the Grounds of Rejection, the Examiner cites Ahmed as disclosing that the selecting step of claim 8 includes the limitations set forth in clauses (a) and (b) above. See Ans. 8. In that regard, the Examiner cites Ahmed, column 8, lines 10–43, and states, “Note that the total cost down to the final nesting level is considered for evaluation.” Id. Appellants contend that the features in clauses (a) and (b) are similar to the second “selecting” limitation of claim 1, which requires selecting a first-tier materialized view based on the cardinality of a nested descendant materialized view, and that “the same arguments hold true” for them and will not be repeated for the sake of brevity. Reply Br. 11. In regard to the second “selecting” limitation of claim 1, Appellants contend that Ahmed Appeal 2012–002348 Application 12/043,908 8 “appears to estimate the cost of running each order of the subqueries” and then selects the order with the lowest estimated cost, rather than selecting between existing views contained with a hierarchy. Id. at 10. Appellants further argue that “it is difficult to comprehend how Ahmed teaches choosing a view based upon the children of that view when no actual views have been generated until after the order has been decided.” Id. Furthermore, Appellants contend that the final level of Ahmed’s hierarchy, based on the Examiner’s interpretation of Ahmed, would be the view of the query itself, and “[i]t would make little sense for Ahmed to take the cardinality of that final level into consideration in selecting the first step to take since it would always result in a tie.” Id. at 12. We agree with Appellants. Although the Examiner finds that Ahmed considers the total cost down to the final nesting level, the Examiner has not demonstrated that Ahmed teaches or suggests (a) comparing the cardinality of each respective nested materialized view at the final nesting level, and (b) selecting the candidate materialized view with the lowest cardinality based on said comparison, as recited in claim 8. Thus, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 8. For the same reasons, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 16. DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–5, 8–13, and 16 is reversed. REVERSED msc Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation