Abstract: A method and system provides collaborative caching of transformed Web objects in a proxy network. The proxies collaboratively provide a set of object transformations by partitioning the different types of object transformations, and caching the transformed Web objects among proxies in order to reduce duplicate object transformation and caching effort. The transformations may include language translations, currency conversions, units of measure conversions, shipping cost calculations and sales taxes calculations. Other transformations are also possible.

Abstract: A computerized method for load balancing in a geographically distributed or clustered system is disclosed. An arbiter assigns clients to nodes. The arbiter partitions clients into groups based on their request load. Each group is dynamically scheduled among nodes, thus avoiding high load groups from being allocated to the same node and overloading the system. If one of the nodes becomes overload, an alarm is generated, so that fewer or no new clients are allocated to the overloaded node.

Abstract: A computer method of online mining of inference rules in a large database comprising a preprocessing stage and an online rule generation stage. The pre-processing stage includes first finding itemsets that possess a minimum computed collective strength K1, and second, pruning the itemsets with inference strength below a predetermined inference strength, K2. The online rule generation stage utilizes the itemsets organized into an adjacency lattice to generate inference rules with inference strength K2.

Abstract: A method and apparatus to dynamically maintain META-tag information specifying categorization and/or degree of compound documents, which are collections or hierarchy of collections of objects (possibly web pages), for efficient retrieval of leaf or intermediate objects with specific characteristics without the need to search any content of the collection. The specific characteristic and the contents of the collection can change constantly both qualitatively and quantitatively (including the insertion, deletion and update of objects). While dynamically maintaining the META-tag information, there are no inclusion restrictions on these compound documents, i.e., any collection can contain itself either directly or recursively; and all objects within a META-tagged compound document are not required to participate.

Abstract: A computer method of online mining of quantitative association rules consisting of two stages, a preprocessing stage followed by an online rule generation stage. The required computational effort is reduced by the pre-processing stage, defined by pre-processing data to organize the relationship between antecedent attributes to create a heirarchially arranged multidimensional indexing structure. The resulting structure facilitates the performance of the second stage, online processing, which involves the generation of quantitative association rules. The second stage, online rule generation, utilizes the multidimensional index structure created by the preprocessing stage by first finding the areas in the data which correspond to the rules and then uses a merging step to create a merged tree in order to carefully combine interesting regions in order to give a heirarchical representation of the rule set. The merged tree is then used in order to actually generate the rules.

Abstract: Fileserver buffers are managed so as to improve the hit ratio for read accesses to the fileserver by clients by grouping related files into filesets, collecting fileserver access operation (i.e., read and write) statistics for each of the filesets, classifying the filesets into a plurality of fileset categories having similar collected access operation statistics and then implementing different fileserver buffer management policies for the blocks (or pages) from each of the different fileset categories. The buffer management policy applied to each of these categories is designed to create a generally higher preference for retaining blocks (or pages) of files in the fileserver buffers having a generally higher read to write ratio.

Abstract: A method and system for prefetching data for clients associated with a proxy server hierarchy and an enhanced content server data transfer to the clients. The method for prefetching data identifies data access patterns and prefetches select information based on a dynamic interpretation of the data access patterns. The content server or proxy server identifies data access reference patterns of clients associated with the content server or the proxy server hierarchy. The data access patterns are preferably stored in a statistics table. The content server generates prefetch hint information based on inputs from the statistics table. The prefetch hint information annotates requested information or objects requested by the clients. The prefetch hint information optimally is updated as the requested information passes through the proxy server hierarchy. The prefetch hint information annotates the requested information requested by the clients.

Abstract: A method for use in geographically distributed or clustered system wherein an arbiter assigns clients to servers. The arbiter also dynamically assigns a valid time interval to each mapping request based on network load and/or capacity parameters such as the client request rate and/or the server capacity. Alternative means for dynamically setting the valid interval in conjunction with a scheduling process, which can be either deterministic or probabilistic, are also devised.

Abstract: A push-based filtering of objects in a client-server hierarchy based on usage information. A method of annotating a push object with meta information on its content and/or urgency is also described. Objects can be staged at the server(s) to provide fast access when the filtered object is later requested. The PICS protocol may be used to communicate various types of information: e.g., by the content provider or a higher level proxy to annotate the object, including an urgency, a summary or title, a group classification, and/or an identity of the push; to convey usage or preference information on pushed objects up the hierarchy, including usage information and user preferences based on object group classifications; and to convey a staging status of each staged object down the hierarchy to improve caching efficiency. An object may include a content hierarchy such as a title, a summary and the full content.

Abstract: A system and method for billing one or more participating parties for client access to the internet is disclosed including the steps of identifying at least one of the one or more participating parties as being responsible for the billing, allocating a share of the billing to each responsible participating party based on a predetermined function and computing a billing amount for each of the responsible participating parties based on a function of the share and a client bandwidth usage.

Abstract: A system and method for caching objects of non-uniform size. A caching logic includes a selection logic and an admission control logic. The admission control logic determines whether an object not currently in the cache is accessed may be cached at all. The admission control logic uses an auxiliary LRU stack which contains the identities and time stamps of the objects which have been recently accessed. Thus, the memory required is relatively small. The auxiliary cache serves as a dynamic popularity list and an object may be admitted to the cache if and only if it appears on the popularity list. The selection logic selects one or more of the objects in the cache which have to be purged when a new object enters the cache. The order of removal of the objects is prioritized based both on the size as well as the frequency of access of the object and may be adjusted by a time to obsolescence factor (TTO).

Abstract: A computer method of removing simple and strict redundant association rules generated from large collections of data. A compact set of rules is presented to an end user which is devoid of many redundancies in the discovery of data patterns. The method is directed primarily to on-line applications such as the Internet and Intranet. Given a number of large itemsets as input, simple redundancies are removed by generating all maximal ancestors, the frontier set, for each large itemset. The set of maximal ancestors share a hierarchical relationship with the large itemset from which they were derived and further satisfy an inequality whereby the ratio of respective support values is less than the reciprocal of some user defined confidence value.The resulting compact rule set is displayed to an end user at some specified level of support and confidence. The method is also able to generate the full set of rules from the compact set.

Abstract: A computer system and method for performing similarity searches which is phase and scale insensitive and which allows similarity searches to be performed at a semantic level. Each sequence in a database is preferably segmented at multiple projections and/or resolution levels. The sequences may represent object having multi-dimensional features such as temporal and/or spatial-temporal data. Preferably, the segmenting logic starts with the finest resolution, and each sequence is parsed into a number of disjointed segments, wherein each segment has uniform features. The uniform features could be segments having a constant slope, or waveform segments representable by a single function. The segments may then be re-sampled into a fixed length vector with appropriate normalization. A label may also be assigned to each segment via conventional clustering/classification methods.

Abstract: A multimedia stream is multicasted. A request to perform the multicast is received. A plurality of distribution nodes are assigned to provide the multicast to a plurality of receivers. The assignment of a node is based on the transformation capabilities of that node. The multicast is then performed and the assigned node performs its transformation. The transformed multicast is distributed to a receiver which is suitable for receiving the transformed multicast.

Abstract: A method and system to map client access patterns in a stateless hypertext server. For each hypertext object access, a plurality of information about the access may be collected, including the requestor address, the hyperlink source, and the hyperlink target. When available, a time stamp of the access and agent information may also be used. The hyperlink source and hyperlink target form a hyperlink access pair, representing a step in the user traversal path on the hypertext objects. These hyperlink access pairs are then mapped into hyperlink access groups. Each hyperlink group represents all the hypertext objects visited by a user along a traversal path. To map hyperlink access pairs into access groups, each access pair is added to an active session if the new access pair can expand the session into a connected traversal path. Once hyperlink groups are identified, user-oriented object usage statistics can be analyzed.

Abstract: A method and system of collaboratively caching information to allow improved caching decisions by a lower level or sibling node. In a caching hierarchy, the client and/or servers may factor in the caching status at the higher level in deciding whether to cache an object and which objects are to be replaced. The PICS protocol may be used to pass the caching information of some or all the upper hierarchy down the hierarchy. Furthermore, the caching status information can also be used to direct the object request to the closest higher level proxy which has potentially cached the object, instead of blindly requesting it from the next immediate higher level proxy. A selection policy used to select objects for replacement in the cache may be prioritized not only on the size and the frequency of access of the object, but also on the access time required to get the object if it is not cached.

Abstract: A computer method of online mining of association rules by pre-processing data within the constraint of available memory. The required computational effort for performing online mining of association rules is reduced by a two-step procedure that involves first creating an adjacency lattice which pre-stores a number of large itemsets at a level of support dictated by available memory. The lattice structure is useful for both finding the itemsets quickly, by reducing the amount of disk I/O required to perform the analysis, and also using the itemsets in order to generate the rules. Once the adjacency lattice is obtained, the second (mining) step is further comprised of two phases. The first phase involves a search algorithm used to find the corresponding itemsets at user specified levels of minimum support. The second phase involves using those itemsets to generate association rules at the user specified level of minimum confidence.

Abstract: A method and system for mining data in a transaction database using a progressive approach is presented. A portion of the transaction database is initially scanned with a relaxed selection criterion to generate a candidate item set to count. The remainder of the transaction database is then scanned to determine a number of occurrences of the candidate item set.

Abstract: A method and system for improving load balancing in a file server is disclosed. The method includes determining the existence of an overload condition on a storage device, the storage device having a plurality of retrieval streams accessing at least one file thereon; selecting a first retrieval stream reading a file; replicating a portion of said file being read by said first retrieval stream onto a second storage device; and reading the replicated portion of said file on said second storage device with a retrieval stream capable of accessing the replicated portion of said file. The method and system enables the dynamic replication of data objects to respond to fluctuating user demand. The method and system is particularly useful in file servers such as multimedia servers delivering continuously in real time large multimedia files such as movies.

Abstract: An apparatus and method includes segmenting each sequence to be stored in a database into nonoverlapping or minimally overlapping subsequences with equal length. Each subsequence is then normalized using a normalization procedure (such as normalized with respect to the energy or maximum amplitude of each sequence) and transformed into a series of coefficients in a feature space. The search is based on hierarchical correlation in the feature space between the target sequence with the subsequences. The correlation between the target sequence and the stored sequences is performed first at the lowest level in the hierarchy. At any given level, a match is declared when the correlated result is larger than a specific threshold. Sequences that fail to satisfy the matching criterion are discarded. The process is continued at the following level until the highest level is reached. Because of the hierarchical search, linear scan of the entire sequence can be avoided.