Abstract: Disclosed herein are computer-implemented methods and systems for securely carrying out electronic transactions including electronic drafts, wherein payment on at least one of the drafts is contingent upon the removal of an associated contingency. The method may include steps of establishing a secure computer site accessible only by authenticated parties to the transaction and by any authenticated contingency approver. The site includes a representation of the transaction that includes a representation of each of the plurality of drafts and an option to remove any contingencies associated therewith.

Abstract: A system and method for managing storage from multiple data storage devices are disclosed. The system and method provide improved load balancing, reduction or elimination of fragmentation, improved redundancy schemes, and efficient changes in hardware configurations. Redundancy methods are employed to prevent loss of data from an occurrence of a multiple disk failure.

Abstract: A method and mechanism are provided for creating, maintaining, and using a hierarchical index to efficiently access information in a relational system based on a pathnames, thus emulating a hierarchically organized system. Each item that has any children in the emulated hierarchical system has an index entry in the index. The index entries in the index are linked together in a way that reflects the hierarchical relationship between the items associated with the index entries. Pathname resolution is performed by following direct links between the index entries associated with the items in a pathname, according to the sequence of the filenames within the pathname. By using an index whose index entries are linked in this manner, the process of accessing the items based on their pathnames is significantly accelerated, and the number of disk accesses performed during that process is significantly reduced.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that speeds up an application by allowing database tables associated with the application to be partitioned across N read-only slave database servers. In this way, each slave database server can process 1/Nth of the workload of the application. Since this processing can take place in parallel, the system can potentially speed up the application by a factor of N. The system includes a master-slave database hierarchy, which includes a plurality of read-only database servers for servicing read operations and a master database server for servicing both read operations and write operations. This master database server contains an entire database and the plurality of read-only database servers contain local read-only copies of portions of the database. The system operates by receiving a database request from an application server at a read-only database server.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates compartmentalized user management in a database system. This database system is compartmentalized into a plurality of domains that are insulated from each other, so that a given user who has access to data within an associated domain does not have access to data in other domains. Upon receiving a request from a database administrator to perform an operation on a user within the database system, the system identifies a domain that the user is associated with in the database system. Next, the system determines whether the database administrator is authorized to modify users associated with the domain. If so, the system performs the operation by modifying an entry for the user within a user table in the database system that contains an entry for each user of the database system.

Abstract: A terminological system automatically generates sub-categories from categories of a knowledge base. The knowledge base includes a plurality of hierarchically arranged categories, as well as terms associated with the categories. A subset of the categories of the knowledge base are designated “dimensional categories.” The system also stores a corpus of documents, including themes and corresponding theme weights for each document. A target category is selected to generate sub-categories. A set of themes from the corpus of documents are selected for each term. Dimensional category vectors, one for each term, are generated by associating the set of themes for a term to a dimensional category in the knowledge base. The dimensional category vectors for each term are analyzed to determine if one or more clusters of terminological groups exist to generate new sub-categories. A content processing system, which generates themes and theme weights, is also disclosed.

Abstract: A mechanism for performing a two-phase commit is provided. The mechanisms perform a two-phase commit in a manner that reduces the number of messages transmitted between a coordinating database system and the participating database systems, and the number of log flushes performed to complete a two-phase commit. To determine whether a particular participating database system is prepared to commit, the coordinating database system first examines external log tracking data that resides on the coordinating database system. External log tracking data, which indicates various states of logs on other database systems, is used to determine whether or not a particular participating database system is prepared to commit.

Abstract: An object instance memory allocation module allocates blocks of memory in an object oriented software system. An object instance pool is generated for each object class configured as a reusable class. The object instance pool contains a plurality of entries, and each entry is associated with an object instance memory block configured to store an object instance for the object class. When an object instance is instantiated from an object class, the object instance memory allocation technique allocates, from an entry of the object instance pool, a memory block if one of the memory blocks are available. When an object instance is released (i.e., deleted), the object instance memory allocation technique re-assigns memory blocks for the object class into an entry of the object instance pool. An object oriented software environment that implements the object instance memory allocation techniques is also disclosed.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for transferring a resource from the cache of one database server to the cache of another database server without first writing the resource to disk. When a database server (Requestor) desires to modify a resource, the Requestor asks for the current version of the resource. The database server that has the current version (Holder) directly ships the current version to the Requestor. Upon shipping the version, the Holder loses permission to modify the resource, but continues to retain the resource in memory. When the retained version of the resource, or a later version thereof, is written to disk, the Holder can discard the retained version of the resource. Otherwise, the Holder does not discard the retained version. Using this technique, single-server failures are recovered without having to merge the recovery logs of the various database servers that had access to the resource.

Abstract: A mechanism is provided for dynamically rendering a component instance at run time. According to the invention, a rendering engine is provided for each type of component that can be rendered, and each engine is responsible for rendering all instances of that component type. When it comes time to render a component instance, the rendering engine associated with that instance is invoked. When invoked, the rendering engine receives a set of metadata associated with the component instance, which specifies the attribute values for that instance. Based upon the metadata, the rendering engine determines, at run time, a format for the instance, and renders the instance in accordance with the determined format. By rendering the instance at run time based purely upon metadata, the present invention makes it possible to store only the metadata associated with the instance. Unlike the prior art, it is not necessary to store a component as a large static entity. As a result, the present invention requires less storage.

Abstract: A system and method for indexing and storing multi-dimensional or multi-attribute data. Data items are recursively sorted in a selected dimension (e.g., the dimension having the greatest variance) and divided until each subdivision fits into a leaf node having a specified fanout. Intermediate nodes and a root node are constructed to complete the index. Each node of the index is stored in a database as a separate object or record and may include a node identifier of the unique, an identifier of a parent and/or a sibling node and an entry for each child of the node, which may be data items or other nodes. Each record entry for a child includes an associated bounding area encompassing descendant data items. Another database table or module may store information about the index, such as the dimensionality of the data, the index fanout and an identifier of a root of the index.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for distributing work granules of a parent task among processes running on various nodes in a multi-processing computer system is provided. The parent task is divided into work granules of varying sizes based on the location of the data that must be accessed to perform the work granules. At least one process on each of the nodes that will be assisting in the execution of the parent task is initially assigned a work granule based on efficiency considerations. Such efficiency considerations may include, for example, the location of the data to be accessed relative to the process, the current I/O load of the devices on which data to be accessed is stored, and the relative sizes of the various work granules. When a process completes the work granule assigned to it, the process is assigned one of the remaining unassigned work granules. Again the work granule assignment is made based on efficiency considerations. This process continues until all of the work granules have been completed.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for implementing a content-based publish-and-subscribe system in a relational database system. A subscriber may request for messages by using a query language supported by the database server. The queries are then used as subscription rules for determining whether an incoming message is to be sent to the subscriber. Evaluation of incoming messages against subscription rules involves a two-tier process. The first tier involves filtering out all the subscription rules that could not possibly apply to the incoming message. The second tier involves further evaluation of the incoming message, if needed, to determine which subscribers are to receive the incoming message. In another aspect of the embodiment, in cases where the publisher is the relational database system itself, queries that request for messages are not stored as subscription rules because publication of the messages is implicit.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for determining which data item version to supply to a query. According to the techniques, the determination is made by associating a new field, which indicates the time a data item version was current, with each data item version; associating a new field with each query, which indicates the last change that the query must see made by the transaction to which the query belongs; and determining which data item version to use to answer the query based, in part, on a comparison between the values of the two new fields.

Abstract: A system and method for prefabricating information pages is disclosed, in which the necessary steps to retrieve and package information requested by a user are preemptively performed by the computer system. When the user later makes an explicit request for information, the desired information can be immediately displayed to the user without the delays associated with contemporaneous retrieval and packaging of the information. The prefabrication system of the invention can be configured to automatically tune its processing to the changing conditions that exist in the computer system, which can be used to maximize use of available system resources. The present invention can be scalably deployed to perform coordinated prefabrication services on multiple, distributed computing nodes. In an embodiment, the invention is completely non-intrusive, in which no changes to existing application are required to implement prefabrication of pages.

Abstract: Objects that are managed within a run-time environment are stored on N-bit aligned addresses. Due to the alignment restriction, the N least significant bits of a reference to an object are available for storing information about the storage properties of the object. This information is extractable by fast register operations. The storage properties can include the lifetime, format, and contiguity of the object, or a combination of these properties. If the run-time environment implements a generational garbage collector, the reference tags are used to encode whether or not the object is recently allocated.

Abstract: A method and system is provided for processing queries. Specifically, techniques are provided for handling a query that does not reference a particular materialized view, where the query requires access to values from a particular column not contained in the materialized view. A technique is also provided for processing a query that does not reference a particular materialized aggregate view, where the materialized aggregate view specifies an outer join between a child table and a parent table and the query specifies a particular type of join between the child table and the parent table, where the particular type of join is one of an inner join, an anti-join and a semi-join. The query is rewritten to produce a rewritten query that accesses the materialized aggregate view to produce data required by the query.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for performing an array DML operation. During the performance of the operation on a data item in the array, and if an error occurs, then error information is stored and the array operation continues by performing the operation on the next data item in the array. The error is used to create update input data for the DML operation, and the update input data can be supplied during run-time of the program.

Abstract: The present invention provides a generic mechanism for enabling a user to develop one or more components. According to the invention, there is provided a generic builder engine which solicits from a developer, through a simple dialog, all of the information needed to define an instance of a component. The builder engine solicits the information by generating one or more display pages based upon predefined metadata. This metadata specifies what information needs to be solicited from the developer to define an instance of that type of component, and how that information should be solicited. Based upon this metadata, the generic builder engine dynamically generates one or more display pages to solicit the necessary information from the developer. Implementing the builder engine in this generic manner is quite advantageous because it makes it possible for a single engine to be used to guide a developer through the defining process for all possible types of components.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing a two-phase commit of a transaction is provided. The mechanisms described herein perform a two-phase commit in a manner that reduces the number of messages transmitted between a coordinating database system and the participating database systems, and the number of log flushes performed to complete a two-phase commit. Once the coordinating database system determines that all participating database systems participating in a database transaction are prepared to commit, the coordinating database system commits the transaction on the coordinating database system. Forget requests are then transmitted to each of the participating database systems. Rather than waiting to receive a forget acknowledgment and performing other forget processing operations, the coordinating database system delegates this work to a forget collector.