Techniques for eventually consistent inheritance propagation for nested content item namespaces

Abstract

A method and apparatus for inheritance-based propagation is provided. The method comprises receiving a request from a client computer to update an access permission associated with a specific namespace in a nested namespace structure for a user, the specific namespace being associated with a group of users, wherein the nested namespace structure includes one or more child namespaces of the specific namespace; causing updating of the access permission associated with the specific namespace for the user; identifying the specific namespace as the current namespace; and performing an iterative process having the following steps until a termination criterion is satisfied. The iterative process comprises for each of one or more child namespaces nested directly within the current namespace, causing execution of a job for updating a child access permission associated with the child namespace for the user, the execution of at least one of one or more jobs corresponding to the one or more child namespaces of the current namespace comprising automatically re-executing the at least one of the one or more jobs in response to unsuccessful execution of the at least one of the one or more jobs while maintaining at least eventual consistency of the one or more child namespaces with respect to updates. The iterative process further comprises for each of the one or more child namespaces, identifying the child namespace as the current namespace and restarting the iterative process.