Patents by Inventor Neal Fachan

Neal Fachan has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20140279930
    Abstract: A distributed database system may implement fast crash recovery. Upon recovery from a database head node failure, a connection with one or more storage nodes of a distributed storage system storing data for a database implemented by the database head node may be established. Upon establishment of the connection with the storage nodes, that database may be made available for access, such as for various access requests. In various embodiments, redo log records may not be replayed in order to provide access to the database. In at least some embodiments, the storage nodes may provide a current state of data stored for the database in response to requests.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 7, 2014
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: AMAZON TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
    Inventors: ANURAG WINDLASS GUPTA, LAURION DARRELL BURCHALL, PRADEEP JNANA MADHAVARAPU, NEAL FACHAN
  • Publication number: 20140279929
    Abstract: A database system may include a database service and a separate distributed storage service. The database service (or a database engine head node thereof) may be responsible for query parsing, optimization, and execution, transactionality, and consistency, while the storage service may be responsible for generating data pages from redo log records and for durability of those data pages. For example, in response to a write request directed to a particular data page, the database engine head node may generate a redo log record and send it, but not the data page, to a storage service node. The storage service node may store the redo log record and return a write acknowledgement to the database service prior to applying the redo log record. The server node may apply the redo log record and other redo log records to a previously stored version of the data page to create a current version.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 7, 2014
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: AMAZON TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
    Inventors: ANURAG WINDLASS GUPTA, NEAL FACHAN, SAMUEL JAMES MCKELVIE, LAURION DARRELL BURCHALL, CHRISTOPHER RICHARD NEWCOMBE, PRADEEP JNANA MADHAVARAPU, BENJAMIN TOBLER, JAMES MCCLELLAN COREY
  • Publication number: 20140279900
    Abstract: A database system may maintain a plurality of log records at a distributed storage system. Each of the plurality of log records may be associated with a respective change to a data page. A snapshot may be generated that is usable to read the data as of a state corresponding to the snapshot. Generating the snapshot may include generating metadata that is indicative of a particular log identifier of a particular one of the log records. Generating the snapshot may be performed without additional reading, copying, or writing of the data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 7, 2014
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: AMAZON TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
    Inventors: ANURAG WINDLASS GUPTA, PRADEEP JNANA MADHAVARAPU, SAMUEL JAMES MCKELVIE, NEAL FACHAN
  • Publication number: 20070233710
    Abstract: In one embodiment, systems and methods are provided for tracking events wherein an event system monitors certain areas of a system. When an event occurs in one area of the system, the event system notifies the processes listening to that area of the system of the event.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 31, 2006
    Publication date: October 4, 2007
    Inventors: Aaron Passey, Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070195810
    Abstract: The systems and methods of the present invention provide a quiescing protocol. In one embodiment, nodes of a system utilize the protocol to complete processing until they reach a consistent state.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 17, 2006
    Publication date: August 23, 2007
    Inventor: Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070171919
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for passing control of message dependencies and ordering to one or more network nodes participating in a transaction. Thus, messages can be sent to the participating nodes and the participating nodes can handle the messages according to their respective dependencies without first sending a response or waiting for the next message to arrive. In one embodiment, at least one message is flagged with a checkpoint to indicate that messages sent before the checkpoint are to be handled by the participating nodes before messages after the checkpoint. Messages may also be flagged with error-handling information. For example, a message may be marked to indicate that if the message fails, no further messages are to be sent to the node had the failure. Responses to a group of messages can be collected in a single operation.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 28, 2005
    Publication date: July 26, 2007
    Inventors: Peter Godman, Skye Poier, Aaron Passey, Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070168351
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for atomic single-failure non-blocking and double-failure non-blocking commitment protocols. The protocols may be used for a variety of transactions that involve two or more parties including an initiator of the transaction, a coordinator of the transaction, and one or more participants in the transaction. The participants notify the coordinator when they are prepared to commit the transaction. The coordinator then determines when to commit or abort the transaction. If the coordinator disconnects from one or more of the participants, the participants can resolve the transaction independently. Some embodiments also include a distributor that interacts with the coordinator and the participants to resolve the transaction. If one or more parties become disconnected from the coordinator or the distributor, the participants vote to determine whether to receive instructions from the coordinator or the distributor.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 8, 2006
    Publication date: July 19, 2007
    Inventor: Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070094431
    Abstract: The systems and methods manage concurrent access requests to a shared resource. The systems and methods utilize an access management algorithm that permits multiple processes to concurrently obtain shared locks on the shared resource, but also limits access to only one process when an exclusive lock is granted. In doing so, the systems and methods avoid the problems of starvation and deadlock.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 21, 2005
    Publication date: April 26, 2007
    Inventor: Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070094310
    Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed that provide an indexing data structure. In one embodiment, the indexing data structure is mirrored index tree where the copies of the nodes of the tree are stored across devices in a distributed system. In one embodiment, nodes that are stored on an offline device are restored, and an offline device that comes back online is merged into the distributed system and given access to the current indexing data structure. In one embodiment, the indexing data structure is traversed to locate and restore nodes that are stored on offline devices of the distributed system.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 21, 2005
    Publication date: April 26, 2007
    Inventors: Aaron Passey, Darren Schack, Peter Godman, Robert Anderson, Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070094452
    Abstract: Systems and methods using an excitement protocol enable prediction of which blocks of a resource to prefetch and store in memory. The system maintains a set of excitement values corresponding to the resource being accessed. The system also maintains a threshold. As blocks of the resource are requested, the system updates the set of excitement values. The system compares the excitement level to the threshold to determine whether to prefetch the corresponding resource block.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 21, 2005
    Publication date: April 26, 2007
    Inventor: Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070091790
    Abstract: The systems and methods maintain varying protection levels of related objects, such as when nodes of a data structure are protected at the same or greater protection level as their children nodes. In one embodiment, the nodes store data to track protection levels of their children nodes.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 21, 2005
    Publication date: April 26, 2007
    Inventors: Aaron Passey, Neal Fachan
  • Publication number: 20070094277
    Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed that provide an indexing data structure. In one embodiment, the indexing data structure is mirrored index tree where the copies of the nodes of the tree are stored across devices in a distributed system. In one embodiment, nodes that are stored on an offline device are restored, and an offline device that comes back online is merged into the distributed system and given access to the current indexing data structure. In one embodiment, the indexing data structure is traversed to locate and restore nodes that are stored on offline devices of the distributed system.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 21, 2005
    Publication date: April 26, 2007
    Inventors: Neal Fachan, Aaron Passey, Darren Schack
  • Publication number: 20060095438
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for atomic single-failure non-blocking and double-failure non-blocking commitment protocols. The protocols may be used for a variety of transactions that involve two or more parties including an initiator of the transaction, a coordinator of the transaction, and one or more participants in the transaction. The participants notify the coordinator when they are prepared to commit the transaction. The coordinator then determines when to commit or abort the transaction. If the coordinator disconnects from one or more of the participants, the participants can resolve the transaction independently. Some embodiments also include a distributor that interacts with the coordinator and the participants to resolve the transaction. If one or more parties become disconnected from the coordinator or the distributor, the participants vote to determine whether to receive instructions from the coordinator or the distributor.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 28, 2005
    Publication date: May 4, 2006
    Inventors: Neal Fachan, Peter Godman, Aaron Passey