Oracle International Corporation

David Mor

Gopalan Arun

Marco Carrer

Ramkrishna Chatterjee

Lory Dean Molesky

Carl J Evankovich

Xiaohua Lu

Ramesh Vasudevan

Amit C Dhuleshia

Chen Zhou

Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with providing non-linear navigation in a discussion forum are described. One method embodiment includes maintaining a location data that identifies a thread or message to which a user has navigated. The method also includes manipulating a navigation control in a graphical user interface based on actions taken by the user and/or other users of the system. The navigation control facilitates a user moving to points not traditionally reachable in a single vertical navigation step in a discussion forum interface.

Non-linear navigation in discussion forums

Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with thread-based conversation management are described. One system embodiment includes a conversation manager that provides access to communication applications, that provides lifecycle management for an electronic conversation carried on over the communication applications, and that organizes conversation elements belonging to a conversation carried on using the communication applications. The conversation lifecycle may include pausing and resuming a conversation carried on, at least in part, over a synchronous, online, real-time, communication application. The system embodiment may also include a thread manager to provide thread-based storage for conversation elements.

Thread-based conversation management

Systems, methods, and media associated with coordinating a discussion forum application and an email application are described. One example system includes a data store and a coordination logic. The data store may store a discussion forum message in a data structure accessible to both an email logic and a discussion forum logic. The coordination logic may provide access to the discussion forum message for the email logic and the discussion forum logic. The coordination logic may also maintain read status consistency for the discussion forum message and cause threading information associated with the discussion forum message to be honored.

Email and discussion forum system

Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with artifact type neutral change management are described. One example method includes maintaining an access table for each artifact in a collaborative software environment that records a most recent access of an artifact on a per user basis. An artifact type registration table is also maintained that maps each artifact type to the access table that records access information for artifacts of the given type and to a data store that stores artifacts of that type. For a given user, artifact pair, queries on the type registration table, access table, and data store are generated to return the last modification time for the artifact and the user's last access time for the artifact. This information is used to determine a change status of the artifact for the given user. This common framework can be used for artifacts of any type that are registered in the type registration table.

Change management

Systems, methods, media, and other embodiments associated with effort based relevance in discussion forums are described. One example method includes receiving activity data concerning messages associated with electronic discussion forum topics. The activity data may include a view count (Vw), a book mark count (Bf), a reference count (Rf), and a reply count (Rp). The effort based relevance may be computed from Vw and one or more of, Bf, Rf, and Rp. Topics may be logically ordered using the effort based relevance.

Effort based relevance

Techniques for increasing the amount of information that may be displayed in a graph produced by a visualization system and simplifying the specification of the information. With regard to nodes of the graph, locations relative to the displayed node at which values of attributes of the displayed node are effective may be specified. 17 locations may be specified using values that indicate compass directions and whether the location is inside or outside the boundaries of the node. Among the attributes whose locations may be specified are content attributes whose values are strings or images and action attributes which specify actions that occur in response to mousing actions at the specified locations. Specification of attributes of nodes and also of links is simplified by the use of inheritance. Also disclosed are an API for setting and reading attributes and a technique for producing compressed representations of nodes at rendering time.

Displaying information using nodes in a graph

Techniques employed in displays of graphs with large numbers of nodes for viewing details of an area of interest while preserving context. The techniques take advantage of parent-child and sibling relationships. Sibling nodes and children of sibling nodes are displayed in rows. The center of interest is at the center of a row and nodes at the ends of the rows overlap. A parent node may have a node scroller associated with it for viewing the parent's child nodes one page of nodes at a time. The node scroller includes paging buttons and may also include a scroll bar with a slider. The node scroller may be displayed on the parent node itself or on the links connecting the parent node to the page of children currently being displayed. Also disclosed are details of the implementation of a preferred embodiment of the node scroller and details of an application programmer's interface (API) for creating and manipulating node scrollers.

Node scrollers

A version control system is described for use in connection with a database management system to facilitate versioning of a database table, the system including a database table and a version control module. The database table comprises a plurality of records, each record including at least one data field for storing user data and at least some of the records including a version control field including version control information. The version control module is configured to, in response to a user query related to the database table and related to a version, generate an augmented query for processing by the data base management system, the augmented query relating to the user query and the version control information. The version control module facilitates association of versions of the database with respective ones of a hierarchy of states and allows conflicts therebetween to be resolved, data to be posted from child states to respective parent states in the hierarchy, and referential constraints between tables to be preserved.

Growing community of inventors

Merrimack, NH, United States of America

David Mor