Abstract: Retrofitting recommender systems, so that they can scale to large data, is disclosed. The principal notion is to reduce data requirements of existing recommender engines by performing a type of data reduction that minimizes the loss of information given the engine. The reductions covered in this invention are designed to be easily implemented on a database system, and are intended to have minimal impact on an existing implementation of a recommender system. In one embodiment, a method repeats reducing the data by a number of records, until an accuracy threshold or a performance requirement is met. If the accuracy threshold is met first, the method repeats removing a highest-frequency dimension from the data, until the performance requirement is also met. The reduced data is provided to the recommender system, which generates predictions based on the reduced data, and a query.

Abstract: One embodiment of the mechanism provides a system for storing short-lived objects defined within an object-oriented programming system. These short-lived objects are created in a virtual machine used for executing platform-independent code and are ordinarily created during normal operation of the virtual machine. The system works by allocating a storage area reserved for short-lived objects that uses a method of garbage collection optimized for short-lived objects. After the storage area is allocated, the system receives requests to create an object. The system then determines if the object is a short-lived object by referring to a table of short-lived objects. If the object is a short-lived object, it is created and placed in the reserved storage area.

Abstract: Apparatus and method for Storage Resource Management (SRM)—i.e., the management of computer storage devices as resources. Methods for Storage Resource Management are described that can be easily and efficiently scaled to computer systems which could include thousands of computers while providing detailed file storage attributes. These methods include three phases: (1) an initialization phase, (2) a data collection phase, and (3) a management server communication phase.

Abstract: In a computer system having multiple devices, such as hard disk drives, CD ROM drives, DVD drives, and like volumes in which the data is accessible in numbered blocks, an operating system maintains, for all such devices, a device buffer cache system in which 4K RAM buffers are allocated to any 4k block of device-resident data on any device that is accessed by a program. These 4K buffers are linked to the, buckets of a hash table. Indices into the hash table are computed by exclusive-ORing together the block number of a data block with a device identifier. The device identifiers are selected in such a manner that they are relatively uniformly distributed over a permissible range of values, thereby reducing the number of hash table collisions. These identifiers may be the size of the hash table multiplied by fractions in the series: 0, ½, ¼, ¾, ⅛, ⅝, ⅜, ⅞, {fraction (1/16)}, {fraction (3/16)}, and so on.