International Business Machines Corporation

Jung-hsin Eva Hu

William J Baer

Steven Victor Kauffman

Lara Marie Lewis

Ronald Elliott Parrish

Jane K Doong

Hsiuying Yen Cheng

Kyung B Lee

The present invention is directed to a storage management system. More particularly if relates to a client/server library system for storing objects in the library system in batches by avoiding storing those objects in an intermediary storage, such as in a client storage space or in a cache, before storing them in the library system. The invention includes a library server, object server and library client, in which an application program interacts with the library client for storing objects, or binary large objects (blobs), in the object server under control of the library server. The present invention provides for an application program to read in objects into a memory space allocated and managed by the application program, or into an application program memory space allocated and managed by the library client. When the library client stores the objects residing in the allocated memory space, copies of the objects are transferred directly from the allocated memory space to the object server without having another copy of the object first being made in the library client, such as in the library client storage space or in a client cache. Accordingly, batch storage of objects is accomplished more efficiently than in conventional library system.

Method and apparatus for batch storage of objects in a client-server storage management system

An object management system for storing persistent object oriented objects, includes an object vault, a structural type manager and a digital library. The object vault is connected to the structural type manager and the digital library is connected to the structural type manager. An application program is connected to the object vault. Objects to be stored are represented as a Key Value Dictionary (KVD) in which attributes, or metadata, relating to the objects are stored as key-value pairs. Objects are categorized as having different structural types in which certain attributes for objects having the same structural type are cataloged to facilitate indexing and searching for the objects. The structural type manager maintains a mapping between structural types and a subset of keys for the structural types as well as corresponding database references for cataloging the object attributes. Also disclosed is a method of storing objects in the digital library where the corresponding database references for the subset of keys are retrieved from the structural type manager. The values corresponding to the subset of keys are retrieved from the Key Value Dictionary and stored in the library catalog. The Key Value Dictionary is serialized and stored in the digital library, and a signature is returned. The object stored in the digital library is retrieved by locating the objected based on the cataloged key values. Preferably the persistent objects are Java programming language objects.

Object management system for digital libraries

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Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Jung-hsin Eva Hu