Abstract: A system capable of associating tickets with an account to provide ticketless entry to an event. The system may verify that a user is associated with the account using far field verification techniques, such as using facial recognition or by detecting wireless signals. The system 100 may improve a user experience by simplifying the process of entering the event, as the far field verification techniques do not require direct interaction with the user. As a result, the user may access the event without stopping at the entrance to provide proof of purchase (e.g., a physical or electronic ticket, bar code, etc.), proof of identification (e.g., driver's license, passport, biometric scans, etc.) and/or other information.

Abstract: An automated ticket reservation system proactively reserves tickets for a venue on behalf of customers who are identified as “fans” of the venue or an artist of an upcoming event at the venue. Subscribing customers to a proactive ticket reservation service can thereafter receive electronic notifications of tickets that have been proactively reserved for them based at least in part on a demonstrated interest in the venue or the artist of the upcoming event. The proactive ticket reservation system can determine that a subscriber is potentially interested in an event or a venue by analyzing customer data, including content streaming behavior and/or purchasing behavior of the subscriber.

Abstract: A lightweight row transfer protocol is described that can be easily handled by thin clients, such as JAVA™ applications using CORBA. The lightweight row transfer protocol serves to reduce bandwidth requirements by applying compression techniques to reduce the number of column lengths in a “result set” of rows that are transmitted from one computer to another.

Abstract: Replication for front office automation involves the use of snapshots that are instantiated on laptops, in which refreshing the snapshots is driven from a master site with a high-performance protocol. All of the necessary snapshot metadata for performing the snapshot refreshes is stored at the master site, so that the laptop only needs to send a single refresh request. In response to the refresh request, the master site reconciles the differences between the master tables and the laptop's snapshots and transmits the differences to the laptop, reducing the necessary network traffic for updating a snapshot to a single round trip.

Abstract: Replication for front office automation involves the use of snapshots that are instantiated on laptops, in which refreshing the snapshots is driven from a master site with a high-performance protocol. All of the necessary snapshot metadata for performing the snapshot refreshes is stored at the master site, so that the laptop only needs to send a single refresh request. In response to the refresh request, the master site reconciles the differences between the master tables and the laptop's snapshots and transmits the differences to the laptop, reducing the necessary network traffic for updating a snapshot to a single round trip.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for checking product availability from various suppliers so that purchase orders may be automatically generated upon a determination that all desired products are available. In accordance with one embodiment, a “customer” program converts the business objects that create the product demand for the desired products into various supply assurance requests. The customer program then sends each of the supply assurance requests to a respective supplier to query the product availability. After sending the supply assurance requests, the customer program waits until it receives all of the supply assurance replies corresponding to the supply assurance requests. If the supply assurance replies indicate that all the desired products can be provided by the supplier, then the customer program generates one purchase order to each of the suppliers that received a supply assurance request, to place orders for the desired products.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for fast refreshing a subquery snapshot creates the snapshot based on a first table and a second table according to a snapshot definition query, which contains one or more subqueries. Information about modifications to the first and second tables is stored in first and second log, respectively. When a refresh operation is initiated, the snapshot is refreshed by reconciling differences between the snapshot, the first table and second table according to the snapshot definition query, the first log, the second log, the first table, and the second table.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing an administrative function on an object, replicated at a plurality of sites, suspends or "quiesces" replication activities at the granularity of an object group. Each object resides in an object group, and each object group has a status flag that indicates whether replication activities are quiesced. In response to detecting a request to perform an administrative function on an object, replication activities are suspended for the object group. Previous transactions are propagated to other sites. When each site has propagated all the previous transactions, the administrative function is performed and replication activities for the object group are resumed.

Abstract: A method and apparatus employs primary key values stored in a master table to drive a fast refresh mechanism for a snapshot defined on the master table. A primary key is a set of columns in the master table having a combined value that uniquely identifies each row in the master table. When rows of the master table are modified, the primary key values of the modified rows are recorded in a master log. In response to a fresh command, differences between the master table and snapshot are reconciled based on primary key values stored in the master table, the master log, and the snapshot.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for replicating data among sites is provided. The method allows changes to the same body of data to be replicated synchronously to some destination sites and asynchronously to other destination sites. Such mixed propagation configurations allow synchronous updating to selected remote copies of replicated data where data integrity is a high priority, and asynchronous propagation to remaining copies of replicated data in order to allow transactions to be committed locally regardless of whether the transaction is committed at a remote copy of the replicated data. The propagation mode is selectable by a user on a site-to-site basis for each replicated body of data, thus providing a mix of availability and consistency that is not possible in purely synchronous or purely asynchronous replication systems.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for replicating data in a computer system having a plurality of sites is provided. Data stored at a first site is organized as one or more sets of formatted data. A mapping is created between subsets of data within the sets of formatted data and one or more object groups. These logical mappings to object groups allow distribution of the subsets of data at a finer level of granularity than previously provided and allow the subsets of data to potentially span multiple sets of formatted data. For each of the object groups, a replica of each subset of data that is mapped to the object group is created at one or more replication sites. When a data modification is detected to a subset of data that has been mapped to one of the one or more object groups, the data modification is propagated to the corresponding replication sites.