Home Box Office, Inc.

Sata Busayarat

Allen Arthur Gay

Brandon C Furtwangler

Jonathan David Lutz

Steven N Furtwangler

Gregory John Bellingham

Mei Qi

Jack Song

Jinjiang Zeng

Xinkai Wang

Brandon S Furtwangler

The described technology is directed towards obtaining and returning time offset data instead of current data in response to a data request. The time offset data may be limited to privileged clients only, and only provided thereto when desired, using a time offset value set by the client, for example. For example, a privileged user may request time offset data corresponding to a future time so as to preview how the data may be presented at a future time. Time offset data may be used by a system entity to fill a cache, e.g., as secondary cached data that may be used once primary cached data expires.

Time offset data request handling

The described technology is directed towards returning expanded data, beyond the data that was specifically requested, to a client, in order to reduce or eliminate likely subsequent requests for more data. Client requests for data items are processed by expansion rule logic to find an expansion rule set (e.g., file) corresponding to the identified data item. The rule set is used to expand requests for certain data items into expanded requests that return more data items than those requested. Client devices receive, cache and (often) use the cached expanded data items, which thereby reduces the overall number of requests to the data service. Expansion rules may be based upon observations (e.g., machine learned and/or manual) of request patterns, so as to reasonably predict which data item or items clients will likely next need, and return those as expanded data items in anticipation of their need.

Resource response expansion

The described technology is directed towards maintaining and using a version-based hierarchy of software resources (e.g., file system files) to return version-specific responses to clients. A client sends its version information with each data request, and gets back a response based upon that version. Version changes are made by maintaining the current version of each software code resource and overriding the current version with a previous version for clients as needed. The technology allows updates (e.g., for new devices and new software resource versions) to be supported by inserting resources into the resource hierarchy and moving resources therein based upon versioning. A system based on deltas is also contemplated, in which only parts of a file may be changed relative to a different version, instead of overriding the entire file.

Maintaining and updating software versions via hierarchy

The described technology is directed towards evaluating client-specific information and possibly other information to determine whether to return less data than is available for a data item in response to a request for graph node data to a data service, and/or return expanded graph node data. When a request for graph data is received, client-specific information is used at least in part by a data service in determining whether to return a virtual graph node comprising a relatively lightweight set of information relative to the full set of information maintained in a main (graph) node. The client-specific information is also used in determining whether to return expanded data beyond that requested, e.g., for caching at the client in anticipation of it likely being needed by the client.

Graph views to improve user interface responsiveness

The described technology is directed towards locating and using a template for processing data item data from a general form into a client-specific form for returning in response to a client request. A client request includes a data item identifier and client-specific information. The data item's identifier is processed into a data type and/or identifier, e.g., a string. The client-specific information is used to determine a device class, device type and/or client platform software version. The template is found in a hierarchy of templates based upon the client-specific information and the data type or data ID string, e.g., the client-specific information may be used to determine a subset of template folders that is evaluated to find a file with a filename matching the string. The folders may be ordered from most-specific to least-specific, so as to locate the most specific template file that applies.

Templating data service responses

The described technology is directed towards an image providing service, including an image processing service that composites a base image into a resultant image, e.g., by resizing an image, overlaying text and so forth based upon a purpose for that image and/or a client device class; other parameters such as design information, protection and so forth also may be specified. When a client requests an image including by specifying a purpose and size in a request to an endpoint (e.g., URL) for an image, the image processing service locates or composites a resultant image corresponding to the request, and returns the resultant image or a modified (e.g., resized) resultant image in response to the request. Clients thus obtain images based upon a desired purpose without having to do client-side image processing including image compositing.

Image providing service

The described technology is directed towards returning less data than is available for a data item in response to a request to a data service. A virtual graph node is returned in response to client requests, in which the virtual node comprises a relatively lightweight set of information relative to the full set of information for the data item, e.g., maintained in a main (graph) node. A requesting client indicates that a virtual node is desired, and receives a response comprising the virtual node, generally processed from the main node's data into a reduced subset of the main node. The main node may be cached at the data service, and returned if and when requested.

Virtual graph nodes

The described technology is directed towards a data transformation pipeline architecture of a data service that processes generalized datasets into datasets (e.g., video data or graph nodes) customized for a particular client device. Described herein is maintaining a set of data transformation models at a data service, and upon receiving a client request for data, selecting a relevant subset of the transformation models and arranging the subset into a data transformation pipeline. In general, the pipeline of transformation models transforms the generalized data into the format and shape that each client device expects. The subset may be selected based upon device type, device class and/or software version information (and possibly state data) sent with each data request. The transformation models may be maintained in a hierarchical data store such as files in a file system to facilitate retrieval by searching the hierarchy for appropriate transformation models.

Data delivery architecture for transforming client response data

The described technology is directed towards a cache framework that accesses a tier of ordered caches, in tier order, to satisfy requests for data. The cache framework may be implemented at a front-end service level server, and/or a back end service level server, or both. The cache framework handles read-through and write-through operations, including handling batch requests for multiple data items. The cache framework also facilitates dynamically changing the tier structure, e.g., for adding, removing, replacing and/or reordering caches in the tier, e.g., by re-declaring a data structure such as an array that identifies the tiered cache configuration.

Multitier cache framework

The described technology is directed towards efficiently invalidating cached data (e.g., expired data) in a hash-mapped cache, e.g., on a timed basis. As a result, data is able returned from the cache without checking for whether that data is expired, (if desired and acceptable), because if expired, the data is only briefly expired since the last invalidation run. To this end, a data structure such as a linked list is maintained to track information representative of hash-mapped cache locations of a hash-mapped cache, in which the information tracks a sequential order of entering data into each hash-mapped cache location. An invalidation run is performed on part of the hash mapped cache, including using the tracking information to invalidate a sequence of one or more cache locations, e.g., only the sequence of those locations that contain expired data.

Cache map with sequential tracking for invalidation

The described technology is directed towards maintaining a cache of data items, with cached data items having current value subsets and next value subsets. The cache is accessed for data item requests, to return a cache miss if a requested data item is not cached, to return data from the current value subset if not expired, to return data from the next value subset if the current value subset is expired and the next value subset is not expired, or to return a cache miss (or expired data) if both subsets are expired. Cached data items are refreshed, (e.g., periodically), when a data item's current value subset is expired by replacing the data item's current value subset with the next value subset and caching a new next value subset, or caching a new next value subset when the next value subset will expire within a threshold time.

Cached data expiration and refresh

The described technology is directed towards having user interface objects rendered on a client device based upon provider data of at least part of a client provider graph. The client provider graph comprises a plurality of providers (graph nodes), in which each provider has provider data corresponding to user interface object data. The data of one provider has a reference set containing one or more references (e.g., edges) that each identify another provider, thus forming the graph. Client requests for other provider data are made based upon the reference set. The other provider data is received in response to the client requests, and is maintained at the client (e.g., in a client cache) to build the client graph.

Graph for data interaction

The described technology is generally directed towards batching two or more data requests into a batch request that is sent to a data-providing entity such as a client data access layer coupled to a data service. Described is maintaining a mapping of the requests to requesting entities so that the responses to a batched request, which may be separately streamed, may be assembled into a batch response to the requesting entity. Also described is multiplexing a plurality of requests for the same data item into a single request, which may be added to a batch request, and de-multiplexing the single response into separate responses to each requesting entity.

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Sata Busayarat