Pre-Grant Publication Number: 20070124317
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Discussion (24)
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4
Wayne Delia (about 1 year ago)
I am aware of a commercially available product from i2 Corporation. Part of their Demand Fulfillment application includes a very similar component, coincidentally named "Operational Data Store." Their product, Informatica, provides data mappings to retrieve data from one or more sources, combining all data into their ODS database, which is used as a central repository staging area as a basis to rebuild Demand Fulfillment engines into core memory on other computer workstations.
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Brian Flynn (about 1 year ago)
I'm having a real problem with this one in terms of obviousness. I have been a database developer for about ten years and I'm stretching to see any sense of inventiveness. For most of the claims, I have written code that performs these functions; these are not new techniques.
Unfortunately, I'm also struggling with how to nail down the demonstration that the claims are common. It may be that the way the claims are worded is overly broad. For example, transforming data between formats of two data structures can be done in many different ways in a database, including using an externally linked view, an XML fetch, a procedural language call or aliasing columns in a SQL statement. Does the patent intend to claim to cover these techniques?
The other part that I'm getting myself tangled about is that the claims seem to represent the problem and not the solution. The problem is that there are two separate data structures and data needs to move between then. There is an enablement requirement to patents, which I believe this fails. I submit that my ten years of experience make me at least somewhat skilled in the art, yet I cannot tell you how to duplicate the solution.
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
In my understanding, this pilot is limited to turning over up to 10 examples of prior art documents to the USPTO, along with only comments on same that indicate how it acts as prior art. As such, there is no direct means to submit arguments concerning obviousness. Instead, one must find examples of prior art that may convey the obviousness by illustrating similarity and which predate the submission. For some gory details on USPTO's take on the pilot, see http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/preognotice/peerreviewpilot.pdf. Note also that the aforementioned specifically states that comments as to US Code Title 35 Sec. 12 (search here to find: http://uscode.house.gov/search/criteria.shtml), which appears to cover the mentioned enablement requirement, will explicitly be excluded.
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Oops, dropped a digit. The USC reference should be US Code Title 35 Sec. 112 (not Sec. 12).
Brian Flynn (about 1 year ago)
The link to the PDF is also wrong. However, I understand the point of the pilot. I also know that requiring prior art misses the point of peer review. Peers of patent submitters are only coinceidently scholarly experts in their field.

I'm an expert at database development and how to accomplish what this patent claims, but I have zero training on how to document that via prior art, which is why I've never submitted any. To me, finding prior art for this application's claims are like showing prior art that 1=1. Non-patentability of mathematical formulas aside, 1=1 is so obvious that without training on how to do it, you don't know how to start.

But, this pilot is what it is. Perhaps I can pull something out of an old textbook that demostrates how to do these things.
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Looks like the site was recently updated to turn URLs in text into active links. In doing so, the trailing period in the URL to the USPTO document was inadvertently included in the active link. Just drop the trailing period and the link should work.
2
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Many forms of queries over distributed data sources are practiced, with techniques known by various names including "federation", "query augmentation", "information integration", "interoperability", "heterogenous access", etc. Those techniques generally marry disparate logical data stores, whereas this submission queries data from the same logical store, but at a different stage in the data life cycle. It shares that property with hierarchical
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
(cont'd)
It shares that property with hierarchical storage management, as previously suggested by Paul McKenney; however, HSM traditionally accesses past (historical) or rarely visited current data, whereas this submission discusses access to what is effectively future data of the primary data store.

(sorry, my original comment was truncated despite being under the stated 100 word max)
Elizabeth Haring (about 1 year ago)
Your comment above regarding how "...this submission queries data from the same logical store, but at a different stage in the data life cycle" is interesting considering how Figure 1 illustrates two distinct datastores, 104 and 106, each occupying their own distinct memory space, with each datastore having the ability to have their own query interface. Granted, with regard to the hospital patient information example, I agree that both datastores contain information about the same pat
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
It is true that both the ODS and the staging area are separate physical data stores. However, something termed a "staging area" is unlikely to be considered as a primary or first class database by the user. Rather, it is a temporary holding area that is associated with some other primary database, commonly a data warehouse as implied in this submission, but possibly a transactional or other "front end" database as well. Thus a staging area it may be considered to be an extension of the first class database that is the destination or source of the information that passes through it. That is why I used the term "logical" in "same logical store".
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Note that at least some of the data in the staging area will eventually be inserted directly into the ODS. "Federation" techniques typically operate between data stores that are logically separate from one another. While the submission shares some elements with such techniques, esp. the concept of querying against data found in more than one data store, it is distinct in its approach. Rather than bringing data from multiple sources together solely to form the query result, the submission (in my understanding) is, at the time of a query against the ODS, identifying the relevant data in the external source (the staging area), causing said data to be moved from the staging area to the ODS on demand rather than in its own due time, and then executing the query solely against the updated ODS.
Elizabeth Haring (about 1 year ago)
The operational datastore is in essence the past (historical) data on the patient. The staging area datastore contains the current and "potentially" future information about the patient. I am slightly troubled by Figure 7, whereas data from the staging area is automatically loaded into the operational datastore.
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
The currency (notion of past/present/future) I referred to is with respect to the intended contents of the ODS. For example, it might contain information for the 12 most recent full months, plus partial data for the current month. Data older than that could be considered "past" data, and may be deleted or moved to an archive. "Current" data of the ODS would include data that is up to 12 months+ old. The staging area contains recent data that will at some later time, possibly after transformation and filtering, be inserted into the ODS, e.g. by "trickle" or "batch" loading. In that sense, the staging area contains "future" data of the ODS.
Elizabeth Haring (about 1 year ago)
It would not be good, for example, for a "false" positive on a health diagnosis test to be propogated as "historically true". That is, data from the staging area from a clinical episode should not necessarily be moved to the operational area until the final diagnosis is made. Also, this application describes functionality similar to that between the InfoCubes, Data Manager, and OLAP processor used by the SAP BW appliation.
1
Elizabeth Haring (about 1 year ago)
After reading this application, the querying methods described between the staging area and the operational area sound similar to methods used in Data Warehousing Applications, for example,
Integrated system and method of data warehousing and delivery
US Patent Issued on July 14, 2020
United States Patent 5781911.
There are many methods implemented to try to improve the efficiency of queries within these applications, but I would have to research as to wether there is a similar process al
Patrick Senti (about 1 year ago)
In fact, this sounds a lot like the so-called Hybrid OLAP method introduced to the market by SAS in about 1998, and described in this paper http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi24/Dataware/p139-24.pdf.
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Can you be more specific about what is applicable in this reference?
Elizabeth Haring (about 1 year ago)
Yes, I did. Please see Pior Art submission number 20.
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Thanks Elizabeth. I should have been more clear -- my question above is about Patrick's append and the SAS reference.
Elizabeth Haring (about 1 year ago)
Steve, thanks for the pointer on dependent claims. You are doing such a great job. Have you considered signing up as the facilitator?
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Thank you for your kind post. I might consider it under other circumstances, but in this case I would not, since the assignee for this patent application is my employer. I have invited a few others more expert than I am in this domain to participate; that can be done by anyone, not just an official facilitator. Hopefully one or more may join the discussion, though the generated email could easily be overlooked as unwanted.
Patrick Senti (about 1 year ago)
Steven, I see the following sections being relevant to respective sections of claim 1)
a) page 4, second column, from first paragraph to the end of the page. This basically describes how to associate data structures with one another. This definition implies a query to one data structure based to provide data based on criteria defined.
b) page 3, section "What is dynamic rollup" and page 4, first column section "Remote Access Benefits" - describing the process of finding the most appropriate data source based on the definition as in a), and in respect to the user's query. Further, page 3, last section titled "HOLAP Logging" briefly describing the capability to refine the data structure based on previous queries.
Note that this paper describes an approach to configuration of a technology, since improved and now marketed as (afaik) "SAS OLAP Server". Hope this helps.
Patrick
Steven Pearson (about 1 year ago)
Part (a) of claim 1 appears to me to be a very common kind of notion, and while I do not find exactly that in the SAS document, I would not be surprised to find very similar stuff out there. It is important to note that novelty is generally not required for each of the bits in a claim, but rather for the whole. New and novel things can be made by combining well known elements. The question of novelty needs evaluated for the combination of all elements in the claim. For reference see for example the discussion in this background material linked from the Tutorials section: http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/obviousness/. In part (b) of claim 1, I don't see any discussion of "finding the most appropriate data source ... in respect to the user's query". Even if same is found to be present in both part (b) of claim 1 and in the SAS document, I would still argue as above that this seems a common notion. It does not bear on the elements in part (b) of claim 1 that in my view are the most novel elements in the combination, which are those involving moving relevant data from a staging area into an ODS on demand prior to performing a query on the ODS.
Elizabeth Haring (about 1 year ago)
I've update the pior art submission for "Integrated system and method of data warehousing and delivery," US Patent 5781911.