Box Limited

David Mackenzie

Benjamin Campbell Smith

Peter John Potrebic

Kunal Parmar

Yiming Lu

Miles Spielberg

Tomas Barreto

Arshdeep Mand

Florian Jourda

Sam Ghods

Alex Treyger

Tamar Bercovici

Ryan Luecke

Anthony Bishopric

Techniques for monitoring local and/or remote file systems by a synchronization component (e.g., client/server) of a cloud-based platform are disclosed. In some embodiments, a method of building synchronization events by a synchronization component (e.g., a synchronization server/client) includes obtaining a set of items that have been changed and their new states and retrieving last known states of the set of items that are stored in a reference snapshot inside a filesystem scanner. The method further includes generating differences between the new states and the last known states of the set of items as item changes and utilizing information provided by the item changes to translate the item changes into synchronization events for execution on the opposing file system. A method of handling failed synchronization events by a synchronization component of the cloud-based platform by collapsing a subsequent event with the failed synchronization event is also disclosed.

Systems and methods for synchronization event building and/or collapsing by a synchronization component of a cloud-based platform

Systems and methods for maintaining and updating file system shadows by a synchronization client of a cloud-based platform. In some embodiments, an executor of the synchronization client can execute an action on an item in the local file system which changes the state of the item from an old state to a new state. The synchronization client updates the file system shadows with the new state of the item via an interface to facilitate generation of a synchronization event for the change to the item, that would otherwise go undetected if the change to the item was immediately reversed. In some embodiments, methods for providing shadow consistency and enhancing concurrent access to shadows are implemented by the synchronization client in maintaining and updating the file system shadows.

Maintaining and updating file system shadows on a local device by a synchronization client of a cloud-based platform

Techniques are disclosed for file system monitoring in a system which incrementally updates clients with what occurred in a cloud-enabled platform. In one embodiment, a method comprises, in response to an event which represents that a modification to an item has taken place on the cloud-based platform, identifying whether execution of the event is to violate any local file system rule. The method further comprises, if the execution of the event is to violate any local file system rule, buffering the event until a subsequent event arrives. The method further comprises identifying whether execution of an aggregate of the events is to violate any local file system rule.

File system monitoring in a system which incrementally updates clients with events that occurred in a cloud-based collaboration platform

Techniques are disclosed for improving scalability in a system which incrementally updates remote clients with events that occurred in a cloud-enabled platform. In one embodiment, a method comprises, in response to an action from a user in the cloud-enabled platform, determining a list of events to update one or more collaborators of the user about the action. The method further comprises separating the list of events into a plurality of sub-lists of events such that each sub-list of events can be stored in a database within a designated amount of time, and further comprises storing the plurality of sub-lists of events into the database to be read by the one or more collaborators. Among other advantages, embodiments disclosed herein provide enhancement in scalability, robustness and availability for cloud-based collaboration platforms with large numbers of collaborators by incorporating mechanisms to divide-and-conquer the workload of event updates in such platforms.

Scalability improvement in a system which incrementally updates clients with events that occurred in a cloud-based collaboration platform

Techniques are disclosed for race condition handling in a system which incrementally updates clients with what occurred in a cloud-enabled platform. In one embodiment, a method comprises, in response to an event received at a synchronization client which indicates a modification to an item, comparing a sequence identifier of the item in the event with a current sequence identifier of the item. The sequence identifier of the item can be numeric and can monotonically increase as a state of the item changes. The method further comprises, if the sequence identifier in the event is larger than the current sequence identifier of the item, determining a difference between the item's state as represented in the event and a current state of the item; and, based on the difference, generating at least one synchronization step to update the current state of the item to the item's state as represented in the event.

Race condition handling in a system which incrementally updates clients with events that occurred in a cloud-based collaboration platform

Techniques are disclosed for implementing repository redundancy in a system which incrementally updates remote clients with events that occurred in a cloud-enabled platform. In one embodiment, a method comprises comparing a local timestamp of an event with a remote timestamp of the event. The event is to be stored in a queue in a repository cluster to be read by a remote client. The method further comprises updating the local timestamp of the event if the comparing indicates that the remote timestamp is more recent than the local timestamp. Among other advantages, embodiments disclosed herein ensure that no event in an action log is missed or skipped by any of remote clients in a distributed action log framework system during a switchover from an active but failed server to a backup server, and require zero or minimal down time during the switchover, thereby providing robustness and serviceability to such system.

Repository redundancy implementation of a system which incrementally updates clients with events that occurred via a cloud-enabled platform

System and method for managing updates at clients used by a user to access a cloud-based collaboration service are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a method, which may be implemented on a system, for storing a representation of the action to queues of clients associated with the user in a distributed database cluster based on an action type of an action performed by a collaborator of the user. The clients of the user are selected based on the client category and the action type of the action, to receive a notification as a result of the action or to perform a synchronization with changes that occurred as a result of the action.

Managing updates at clients used by a user to access a cloud-based collaboration service

System and method for incrementally notifying a remote client of updates in a cloud-enabled platform for each remote client associated with a collaborator are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a method, which may be implemented on a system, for detecting an action in the cloud-enabled platform and effectuating a data change as a result of the action in a first database, creating an action log entry from the action, identifying the collaborator of the user's in the cloud-enabled platform, whose remote client is to be synchronized with the data change as an update, and/or writing the action represented by the action log entry to a second database into a queue to by read by the remote client of the collaborator.

Growing community of inventors

Daly City, CA, United States of America

David Mackenzie