Patents Examined by Robert Timblin
  • Patent number: 8001144
    Abstract: Disclosed are embodiments of a system and a method for detecting relationships described in unstructured text-based electronic documents. The system and method incorporate the use of an input file that contains one or more text patterns that represent particular relationships. The text patterns each include regular text expressions that describe the particular relationship and slots for the location of each entity in that relationship. Document(s) are selected by a user and scanned by a proper noun tagger that identifies and tags every occurrence of proper names within the document(s). Then, a pattern matcher scans the document(s) to match text patterns. If a text pattern is matched within a document a relationship detector extracts all pairs of proper names found in the slots for each matched text pattern.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 26, 2008
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: Jasmine Novak
  • Patent number: 7996440
    Abstract: One or more classification algorithms are applied to at least one natural language document in order to extract both attributes and values of a given product. Supervised classification algorithms, semi-supervised classification algorithms, unsupervised classification algorithms or combinations of such classification algorithms may be employed for this purpose. The at least one natural language document may be obtained via a public communication network. Two or more attributes (or two or more values) thus identified may be merged to form one or more attribute phrases or value phrases. Once attributes and values have been extracted in this manner, association or linking operations may be performed to establish attribute-value pairs that are descriptive of the product. In a presently preferred embodiment, an (unsupervised) algorithm is used to generate seed attributes and values which can then support a supervised or semi-supervised classification algorithm.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2007
    Date of Patent: August 9, 2011
    Assignee: Accenture Global Services Limited
    Inventors: Katharina Probst, Rayid Ghani, Andrew E. Fano, Marko Krema, Yan Liu
  • Patent number: 7984060
    Abstract: A user-friendly query modeling tool, for representing, creating, modifying and modeling a query language statement for use in retrieving data from a database. In accordance with the present invention, the tool includes a user interface for receiving or building and manipulating a query, a query model definition for use in populating instances of one or more query models, and a model content provider for receiving query elements from the user interface and providing them to the query model, and conversely, for retrieving query elements from the query model and providing them to the user interface. The model content provider has a hierarchical architecture including lower level API specific components for supporting a plurality of GUI API'S, and higher level API-independent, reusable components. This architecture facilitates scalability in terms of adding support for new API's.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 18, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 19, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Brian G. Payton, Maria N. Scanlon, Sheila I. Sholars, Andrew Speakes
  • Patent number: 7979429
    Abstract: To analyze a data set having one-to-many relation, the number of simultaneous occurrences of data in which two data elements are coexistent is obtained for all combinations of two data elements. A dependence ratio of one data element upon the other data element is calculated from the numbers of simultaneous occurrences. The data elements are grouped based upon the numbers of occurrences of individual data elements and the dependence ratios compared with the predetermined thresholds. Based on the number of occurrences of individual data elements and the dependence ratios, subordinate relations of data elements within the same group are specified and displayed to a user in the form of a tree or balloon figure.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 29, 2007
    Date of Patent: July 12, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: Masakazu Shirota
  • Patent number: 7966286
    Abstract: A method of reusing an object type in a computing environment, the method comprising accepting modifications made to an object type at a source data site in a first computing environment storing the object type, the object type comprising schema and behaviors, wherein the modifications are made to at least one of the schema or behaviors of the object type at the source data site; applying the modifications made to the at least one of the schema or behaviors of the object type at the source data site to an object type schema and behavior at a destination data site in a second computing environment, the object type at the destination data site corresponding to the object type at the source data site; and applying the modifications to an existing object created based on the object type at the destination data site in the second computing environment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 16, 2005
    Date of Patent: June 21, 2011
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Jason Morrill, Hai Liu
  • Patent number: 7966292
    Abstract: A method, article of manufacture, and apparatus for tracking a plurality of objects being stored are disclosed. In an embodiment, this comprises computing the hash value of the name of each object being stored, concatenating the hashed values into a hint, and storing the hint in an index. The size of the hash values is determined by dividing the number of objects into the space available for storing the concatenation, and the range of the hash values may be determined by choosing a prime number smaller than the number that can be represented by the space available for storing the concatenation. Either the hint or the longest pathname containing the objects can be stored, and this may be selected based on the application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2005
    Date of Patent: June 21, 2011
    Assignee: EMC Corporation
    Inventors: Yasemin Ugur Ozekinci, Thomas Papadakis
  • Patent number: 7962471
    Abstract: Demographic information of an Internet user is predicted based on an analysis of accessed web pages. Web pages accessed by the Internet user are detected and mapped to a user path vector which is converted to a normalized weighted user path vector. A centroid vector identifies web page access patterns of users with a shared user profile attribute. The user profile attribute is assigned to the Internet user based on a comparison of the vectors. Bias values are also assigned to a set of web pages and a user profile attribute can be predicted for an Internet user based on the bias values of web pages accessed by the user. User attributes can also be predicted based on the results of an expectation maximization process. Demographic information can be predicted based on the combined results of a vector comparison, bias determination, or expectation maximization process.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 13, 2006
    Date of Patent: June 14, 2011
    Assignee: Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated
    Inventors: Eytan Adar, Lada A. Adamic, Francine R. Chen
  • Patent number: 7962453
    Abstract: Techniques for performing window-by-window remastering are described, in which the mechanism used by nodes to determine the resource-to-window mapping is separated from the mechanism used by the nodes to access resource information. For example, all nodes of a multiple-node system may use the same hash function to determine which resources are involved in a remastering window. However, the resource indexes employed by the nodes to access resource information need not use that same hash function. For example, in nodes where the resource indexes are hash indexes, different nodes may use different hash functions. Further, some or all of the nodes may use mechanisms other than hash indexes to access the resource information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2004
    Date of Patent: June 14, 2011
    Assignee: Oracle International Corporation
    Inventor: Sashikanth Chandrasekaran
  • Patent number: 7958162
    Abstract: A method and system for generating analogous fictional data from non-fictional data, is provided. One implementation involves recording non-fictional data, scoring the non-fictional data in terms of occurrence percentile, obtaining a set of user-configurations that represents a likeness range between non-fictional data and corresponding fictional data, based on the scores and the user-configurations, generating analogous fictional data from the non-fictional data, and comparing hash values for the fictional data with hash values for the non-fictional data to determine matches, and in case of matches, generating analogous fictional data from the non-fictional data based on the scores and incrementally lowered likeness range, whereby entire records of fictional data are generated based on entire records of non-fictional data, wherein the fictional data is consistent with the non-fictional data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 28, 2009
    Date of Patent: June 7, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: Ryan M. Basile
  • Patent number: 7958166
    Abstract: Techniques for providing write-once-read-many (WORM) storage are described herein. According to one embodiment, a range of values is received to set an attribute of a file, where the received range of values is outside of an ordinary range of the attribute in accordance with a file system associated with the file. In addition, a management action is received to be associated with the received range of values of the attribute, where the management action is unrelated to an ordinary action associated with the attribute of the file in accordance with the file system. In response, the received management action is associated with the received range of values of the attribute. Other methods and apparatuses are also described.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 15, 2007
    Date of Patent: June 7, 2011
    Assignee: EMC Corporation
    Inventor: Windsor W. Hsu
  • Patent number: 7949676
    Abstract: Using an ontology to perform an information search utilizing a meaning given to information on a network without being required to perform complicated operations for forming an inquiry sentence in conformity with the ontology. A pre-stage before a search engine provides an information search supporting system having a morpheme analysis section, a syntactic and semantic analysis section, and a conversion execution section which converts a natural language sentence on which syntactic analysis and semantic analysis have been performed into an inquiry sentence described in an ontology description language by referring to a case frame ontology dictionary in which are stored information indicating to which property in an ontology does the relationship among a predicate, a subject and an object in the natural language sentence correspond and the case frame of the natural language sentence in the property.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 29, 2008
    Date of Patent: May 24, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Aya Mori, Hirobumi Toyoshima, Masami Tada
  • Patent number: 7941440
    Abstract: A computer automated method of aggregating data includes the steps of inputting a set of user-defined instructions into a computer database system, inputting a user query into the computer database system, mining the computer database system for data relevant to the user query, creating a data set comprising said data relevant to the user query, and aggregating data in the data set using domain metrics selected based on any of predefined and configurable rules and past user usage.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 28, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 10, 2011
    Assignee: Semantifi, Inc.
    Inventor: Sreenivasa R Pragada
  • Patent number: 7937394
    Abstract: A method and system are provided of processing a search query entered by a user of a device having a text input interface with overloaded keys. The search query is directed at identifying an item from a set of items. Each of the items has a name including one or more words. The system receives from the user an ambiguous search query directed at identifying a desired item. The search query comprises a prefix substring of at least one word in the name of the desired item. The system dynamically identifies a group of one or more items from the set of items having one or more words in the names thereof matching the search query as the user enters each character of the search query. They system also orders the one or more items of the group in accordance with given criteria.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 2, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 3, 2011
    Assignee: Veveo, Inc.
    Inventors: Sashikumar Venkataraman, Rakesh Barve, Murali Aravamudan, Ajit Rajasekharan
  • Patent number: 7933867
    Abstract: A database system includes a storage to store a view containing results of a cube-based operation on at least one base table, with the view containing a first result set for a group-by on a first grouping set, and a second result set for a group-by on a second grouping set. In response to a change to the at least one base table, a controller updates the first result set by computing a change to the first result set based on a change in the at least one base table, and updates the second result set by computing a change to the second result set based on the change to the first result set.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 12, 2003
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2011
    Assignee: Teradata US, Inc.
    Inventors: Hong Gui, Ambuj Shatdal, Curt J. Ellmann
  • Patent number: 7930283
    Abstract: A system receives location information from a user, retrieves weather information based on the received location information, retrieves calendar information associated with the user, and associates the weather information with the calendar information in a calendar application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 19, 2011
    Assignee: Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB
    Inventors: Anna-Maria Lagerstedt, Eral Denis Foxenland, Randi-Lise Hjelmeland Almas, Lisa Wiveca Lindahl
  • Patent number: 7921131
    Abstract: An improved system and method for query processing in a distributed column chunk data store is provided. A distributed column chunk data store may be provided by multiple storage servers operably coupled to a network. A storage server provided may include a database engine for partitioning a data table into the column chunks for distributing across multiple storage servers, a storage shared memory for storing the column chunks during processing of semantic operations performed on the column chunks, and a storage services manager for striping column chunks of a partitioned data table across multiple storage servers. Query processing may be performed by storage servers or query processing servers operably coupled by a network to storage servers in the column chunk data store. To do so, a hierarchy of servers may be dynamically determined to process execution steps of a query transformed for distributed processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 19, 2005
    Date of Patent: April 5, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Radha Krishna Uppala
  • Patent number: 7921087
    Abstract: An improved system and method for query processing in a distributed column chunk data store is provided. A distributed column chunk data store may be provided by multiple storage servers operably coupled to a network. A storage server provided may include a database engine for partitioning a data table into the column chunks for distributing across multiple storage servers, a storage shared memory for storing the column chunks during processing of semantic operations performed on the column chunks, and a storage services manager for striping column chunks of a partitioned data table across multiple storage servers. Query processing may be performed by storage servers or query processing servers operably coupled by a network to storage servers in the column chunk data store. To do so, a hierarchy of servers may be dynamically determined to process execution steps of a query transformed for distributed processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 19, 2005
    Date of Patent: April 5, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Radha Krishna Uppala
  • Patent number: 7921132
    Abstract: An improved system and method for query processing in a distributed column chunk data store is provided. A distributed column chunk data store may be provided by multiple storage servers operably coupled to a network. A storage server provided may include a database engine for partitioning a data table into the column chunks for distributing across multiple storage servers, a storage shared memory for storing the column chunks during processing of semantic operations performed on the column chunks, and a storage services manager for striping column chunks of a partitioned data table across multiple storage servers. Query processing may be performed by storage servers or query processing servers operably coupled by a network to storage servers in the column chunk data store. To do so, a hierarchy of servers may be dynamically determined to process execution steps of a query transformed for distributed processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 19, 2005
    Date of Patent: April 5, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Radha Krishna Uppala
  • Patent number: 7917533
    Abstract: A master management system includes a duty master creating part that counts the number of users in each group of same-attribute users who desire to use each of the applications, that identifies the applications each of which the number of users desiring to use is equal to or larger than a predetermined number, that creates and stores a master in a master management database of a storage device; and an individual setting part that identifies virtualization-possible applications of the applications each of which the number of users desiring to use is equal to or smaller than the predetermined number, and that sets data on users desiring to use the virtualization-possible applications in the distribution destination list of a distributing server.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 13, 2009
    Date of Patent: March 29, 2011
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Akihisa Nagami, Shinji Kimura, Masayuki Tosaka, Fumio Noda
  • Patent number: 7912820
    Abstract: An automatic task generation mechanism provides generation of tasks such as maintenance tasks for a computer system. A set of tasks is set up along with rules for performing the tasks. The rules may be associated with metadata that allow the tasks to be mapped to the tasks. Events may be detected that are related to database operations such as a create, modify, delete or add command. Upon event detection by the system, the system may store the event and associated metadata. Another process may query the event and metadata storage and compare those items to the rules previously set up. If there is a match between the rules and the event, one or more tasks may be established which correspond to an action that is desired to be taken. The task may then be inserted into a computer system for subsequent execution.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 6, 2003
    Date of Patent: March 22, 2011
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Euan Garden, Robert Walters