The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 01, 2003
Filed:
Jul. 12, 2000
Joel Soderberg, Edmonds, WA (US);
Van C. Van, Snoqualmie, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
Methods and systems are described for minimizing increases in memory usage when updating an inheritance tree that follows “first one wins” inheritance semantics for property or “metadata” information. The inheritance tree is updated by writing new files to the inheritance tree, each new file potentially having property information or “metadata” associated therewith. The method examines the ancestral line of each new file that is written to the inheritance tree (and any property value in a global location if necessary) to determine whether existing property values that would be applied to the new file match the property value of the new file. If the existing property value does not match the property value of the new file, the property information is set in the ancestral line of the new file at the level of the new file itself. If the existing property value does match the property value of the new file, then the new file is written to the inheritance tree without writing the property information. Thus, as new files are written to the inheritance tree, the method reduces the amount of property information that needs to be written to the inheritance tree.