Abstract: A collective storage system and method for restoring data in the system after a failure in the system. The system includes multiple storage nodes that are interconnected by a network and store data as extents. There are also a set of Data Service (DS) agents for managing the extents, a set of Metadata Service (MDS) agents for managing metadata relating to the nodes and the extents, and a Cluster Manager (CM) agent in each node. After a node failure is detected by one of the CM agents, the agents responsible for coordinating the data restoring are notified of the failure. The agents generate a plan to restore the data extents affected by the failure, and then collectively restoring the affected extents based on the generated plan. The coordinating agents might be the MDS agents or DS agents. The failure might be a node failure or a disk failure.

Abstract: A collective storage system and method for restoring data in the system after a failure in the system. The system includes multiple storage nodes that are interconnected by a network and store data as extents. There are also a set of Data Service (DS) agents for managing the extents, a set of Metadata Service (MDS) agents for managing metadata relating to the nodes and the extents, and a Cluster Manager (CM) agent in each node. After a node failure is detected by one of the CM agents, the agents responsible for coordinating the data restoring are notified of the failure. The agents generate a plan to restore the data extents affected by the failure, and then collectively restoring the affected extents based on the generated plan. The coordinating agents might be the MDS agents or DS agents. The failure might be a node failure or a disk failure.

Abstract: Information presented to a user via an information access system is ranked according to a prediction of the likely degree of relevance to the user's interests. A profile of interests is stored for each user having access to the system. Items of information to be presented to a user are ranked according to their likely degree of relevance to that user and displayed in order of ranking. The prediction of relevance is carried out by combining data pertaining to the content of each item of information with other data regarding correlations of interests between users. A value indicative of the content of a document can be added to another value which defines user correlation, to produce a ranking score for a document. Alternatively, multiple regression analysis or evolutionary programming can be carried out with respect to various factors pertaining to document content and user correlation, to generate a prediction of relevance.

Abstract: An information access system stores items of information in an unstructured global database. When a user requests access to the system, the system delivers to that user an identification of only those items of information which are believed to be relevant to the user's interest. The determination as to the items of information that are relevant to a user is carried out by ranking each available item in accordance with any one or more techniques. In one approach, the content of each document is matched with an adaptive profile of a user's interest. In another approach, a feedback mechanism is provided to allow users to indicate their degree of interest in each item of information. These indications are used to determine whether other users, who have similar or dissimilar interests, will find a particular item to be relevant.

Abstract: Decoding and encoding of variable length data words and data strings is accelerated by testing for and processing more than one word or string per encoding or decoding cycle. In an encoding scheme wherein fixed length data words are encoded into variable length data strings, decoding is carried out by first receiving a data stream having a plurality of encoded data strings contained therein, and then testing at least a portion of the data stream to determine whether the portion contains one of a number of selected sets of multiple data strings. If the portion of the data stream contains one of the selected sets of multiple data strings, the multiple data strings are decoded into a corresponding set of multiple data words. This decoding procedure allows a plurality of encoded data strings to be decoded in a single decoding cycle. The procedure may be implemented using either a single lookup table or a set of split-level lookup tables.