Patent · US Expired

Byte range locking in a distributed environment

US5956712A · kind A · utility

67Cited by
31References
36Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJun 7, 1995
Grant dateSep 21, 1999
Priority date
Expiry dateJun 7, 2015

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
  • CPC primaryY10S707/99938
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A client-server distributed computer processing system provides staged byte range locking with three levels of lock complexity and contention. When locking activity for a data object involves a plurality of clients, locking is managed centrally in the server operating environment. When only a single client is involved in requesting a lock on a data object such as a data file or portion of a data file, the requesting client can be permitted to manage the locking locally in the requesting client operating environment. Client-managed locking involves two stages of locking complexity on an object-by-object basis. The first stage of client locking involves only a log of current lock activity and handles relatively simple locking. When locking becomes more complex, the client locking is migrated to a second local locking stage, where more complex data structures can support lock fragmentations that affect various portions of the data object, such as partially overlapped byte ranges. Migration between the three stages of locking uses a high level interface rather than migrating implementation-dependant structures and thereby avoids implementation dependencies and local optimization restri…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.