Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Dave D Straube

Arnold S Miller

Balan Sethu Raman

Pradyumna K Misra

Aaron M Contorer

Michael R C Seaman

Paul J Leach

Murli D Satagopan

Colin Harrison Brace

Clifford P Van Dyke

Donald J Hacherl

Yuval Neeman

David S Montague

Peter J Cook

Shioupyn Shen

Keith W Logan

Noa Zalic

Chris L Mayhall

Tim Williams

A system and method for expediting the replication of at least one specified object to a replica in a distributed computer system. A source object of a source replica determines that it has an urgent change to propagate through the distributed system, and informs a replication facility at the source replica of the urgent change. The facility extracts, or is provided with, the change information from that object, and the source replica communicates information representative of the change to a destination replica. A replication facility at the destination replica provides the change information to a destination replica object, which uses the information to make itself consistent with the source replica object.

Urgent replication facility

A system for multi-master unique identifier allocation comprises a server for allocating pools of identifiers to requesting servers and at least one server for requesting pools of identifiers and allocating individual identifiers as necessary. A single master server allocates &ldquo;pools&rdquo; of unique identifiers to network servers upon request. The network servers in turn allocate unique identifiers from their pool as necessary when the server generates new system objects. When a network server's pool of unique identifiers is nearly depleted, the network server requests an additional pool of identifiers from the master server.

Multi-master unique identifier allocation

Dynamic inheritance for data in a replicated tree structured database which is dynamically inherited from parent objects is provided by only replicating original modifications, and then causing each system to propagate inherited information across it's local tree of objects. When a change to a security descriptor or a reparenting of objects is received, a breadth first tree traversal is used to find all the affected objects. An ID list is incrementally deleted as each object is updated. A security descriptor propagator queue is used to track the progress of updates, and items are taken off the list only after they are committed to the database. A gate is used to ensure that that transactions which add new objects and the security descriptor propagation transactions which write new security descriptors are mutually exclusive. A new data structure for the propagation queue comprises a table having a unique, incrementing number representing an order, an identifier of the node to begin on, a flag indicting whether the item may be trimmed a client id, an order index used to find the next element in the queue and a trim index which tracks all trimmable nodes.

Inherited information propagator for objects

A system and method of efficiently replicating data structures in a distributed system of replicas. Each replica in the distributed system maintains a cursor indicative of the extent to which other replicas in the system are consistent with one another. By examining the information in its cursor, a destination replica requesting replication from a source replica is able to determine the extent to which it has been made consistent with that source replica via indirect paths, thus potentially improving the starting point of replication. The source replica similarly examines its cursor to potentially improve the starting point of replication with respect to the starting point requested by the destination replica. In this manner, redundant information transmitted from a source replica when replicating a destination replica is reduced. The reduction in the amount of transmitted replication data is particularly appreciable when the replication topology of the system is changed such as by adding a new connection between existing replicas or by adding a new replica to the system.

Replication optimization system and method

A network directory and naming service include fields for identifying instances of network resources and other objects by both logical and topological grouping. This combination of information facilitates automated efficient decision making with regard to replication of resources and updating the replicas in response to changes. The combination of logical and topological identification for resources also facilitates selection of a close replica in instances where a client requests access to a resource, such as a server, for which communicatively local and remote instances exist.

Method and apparatus for representing and applying network topological

A system provides support for the use of summary catalog data structures. In particular, the system defines such summary catalogs as data structures and provides standardized methods for operating on the data structures. The summary catalogs provide a convenient and highly available mechanism for obtaining information regarding files in the system. The summary catalogs are closely tied to queries in that the summary catalogs store query results. The summary catalogs may be encapsulated into objects that hold selected properties that are derived from other objects in a query or may be formed by other mechanisms. Copies of a summary catalog may be kept consistent using replication that propagates changes. In addition, consistency of summary catalogs with the source objects from which they originated may be maintained.

Summary catalogs

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Dave D Straube