Ex Parte Luo et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 9, 201612061162 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 9, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 12/061, 162 04/02/2008 49267 7590 03/11/2016 TUTUNJIAN & BITETTO, P,C 425 Broadhollow Road, Suite 302 Melville, NY 11747 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Gang Luo 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. YOR920060004US2163-l l 7CON 8005 EXAMINER SHANMUGASUNDARAM, KANNAN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2158 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/11/2016 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): patents@tb-iplaw.com sandy@tb-iplaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte GANG LUO and PHILIP SHI-LUNG YU Appeal2014-002737 Application 12/061, 162 Technology Center 2100 Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS., HUNG H. BUI, and AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges. BUI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants 1 seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner's final rejection of claims 1-21, 25, and 27-29, which are all the claims pending in this appeal. Claims 22-24 and 26 have been cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM.2 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is International Business Machines Corporation. 2 Our Decision refers to Appellants' Appeal Brief filed July 23, 2013 ("App. Br."); Reply Brief filed December 10, 2013 ("Reply Br."); Examiner's Answer mailed October 11, 2013 ("Ans."); Final Office Action mailed Appeal2014-002737 Application 12/061, 162 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants' Invention Appellants' invention relates to real-time materialized view maintenance in relational databases. Spec. 4:8. Claims 1, 8, and 14 are independent. Claim 1 is illustrative of Appellants' invention, as reproduced below: 1. A method for maintaining a materialized view defined on a base relation of a relational database, the method comprising: providing a materialized view maintenance system implemented in a computing device having at least a processor and a memory device; storing at least the base relation in the memory device; and performing content-based filtering on the base relation using the materialized view maintenance system to identifY an update to the base relation as being irrelevant with respect to the materialized view by determining that no join result tuple is produced in a join result set such that the join result set includes no members from a join operation applied to the updated base relation and at least one filtering relation associated with another base relation of the materialized view; and displaying the maintained materialized view so as to exclude the identified irrelevant update. App. Br. 8-11 (Claims Appx.) (disputed limitations in italics). Cheng Witkowski Bedouet Trauring Evidence Considered us 5,551,031 us 6, 134,543 US 6,472,774 Bl US 6,513,033 Bl Aug. 27, 1996 Oct. 17, 2000 Oct. 29, 2002 Jan. 28,2003 March 14, 2013 ("Final Act."); and original Specification filed April 02, 2008 ("Spec."). 2 Appeal2014-002737 Application 12/061, 162 G. Luo et al., A Comparison of Three Methods for Join View Maintenance in Parallel RDBMS, Proceedings of the 19th ICDE, IEEE 177- 188 (2003). D. Quass et al., Making Views Self-Maintainable for Data Warehousing, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Information Systems, IEEE 158-169 (1996). Examiner's Rejections (1) Claims 1-3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14--16, 19, and 28 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Luo. Final Act. 2-9. (2) Claims 4, 5, 10, 11, 17, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Luo and Bedouet. Final Act. 9-13. (3) Claim 21 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Luo and Tauring. Final Act. 13-14. (4) Claims 25 and 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Luo and Cheng. Final Act. 14--16. (5) Claims 7, 13, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Luo and Witkowski. Final Act. 16-18. (6) Claim 27 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Luo and Quass. Final Act. 18-19. Issue on Appeal Based on Appellants' arguments, the dispositive issue on appeal is whether the cited prior art discloses the disputed limitation: performing content-based filtering on the base relation using the materialized view maintenance system to identify an update to the base relation as being irrelevant with respect to the materialized view by determining that no join result tuple is 3 Appeal2014-002737 Application 12/061, 162 produced in a join result set such that the join result set includes no members from a join operation applied to the updated base relation and at least one filtering relation associated with another base relation of the materialized view recited in Appellants' independent claims 1, 8, and 14. App. Br. 12-29; Reply Br. 5---6. ANALYSIS § 102(b) Rejection of Claims 1-3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14-16, 19, and 28 based on Luo In support of the anticipation rejection of independent claims 1, 8, and 14, the Examiner finds Luo discloses a method for maintaining a materialized view defined on a base relation of a relational database, including the disputed limitation: performing content-based filtering on the base relation using the materialized view maintenance system to identify an update to the base relation as being irrelevant \'l1ith respect to the materialized view by determining that no join result tuple is produced in a join result set such that the join result set includes no members from a join operation applied to the updated base relation and at least one filtering relation associated with another base relation of the materialized view Final Act. 3 (citing Luo p. 179 § 2.1.2) (emphasis added). A relevant portion of Luo's cited section 2.1.2 is reproduced below with highlighting to show added emphasis. 4 Appeal2014-002737 Application 12/061,162 ·Tuple J~.~ is insert(~d into the tmxiliary relation /ll?.,~ at node I Then 'f,1 is joined vdth the approprlati;:: niples in dK~ atP;ilh\ry re.lntkm AR.8 iinsti:ud of bns-c n .. \bltl<)U H) at node j utmzing th(.': index h, If J\l is partitiou(;d on HU ~Htrilnnc of lL the join result tupk.~s (if aiiy} an:.~ st~nt tci :s:orrn:.~ node /<.'. fn(Kk k rnillht hi::~ thi..:~ imme as nofk /}tu he insertt~d into JV' •, ·M·· , •. · bnscd on dk~ attribute value nf ~J\ .. lf Jl,/ is not partitioned on an attribute of A, dK~n the join result tuplt~s lK<..~d to bt~ i::fr,;tribut\~d to .mukipk~ nod.~~s to b\~ ins;;_~rtt~d into JV', Figuxes. 4a and 4h sfo.nv this pr(K:t~dmx~. (~*)JV .. is panith:.11wd (b) f~.i is not panhkmed on an Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation