Apple patent is for managing cross-store relationships to data objects
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 20, 2008 at 9:53am
An Apple patent (number 7376658) filed at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office is for managing cross-store relationships to data objects. Managing cross-store relationships to data objects is disclosed.
Specifically, per Apple, cross-store relationships to data objects stored in a potentially dynamically changing set of persistent data stores is provided through a relationship definition that identifies a type of object to which the relationship pertains and specifies a property to be used to determine, which, if any, objects of the identified type are to be included in the relationship; by determining dynamically which, if any, currently available objects of the identified type have the specified property; and making available from among the objects of the identified type available at that time, if any, those objects, if any, that have the specified property.
According to Apple, traditional implementations of object-storage mapping frameworks focus on enterprise client/server databases and only allow for a fixed configuration of databases or persistent data stores. In addition, in a typical prior art system, relationships between data objects are defined rigidly, e.g., using identifiers such as primary keys, pointers, etc. Relationships that are implemented using such identifiers between objects are very explicit. Thus, if for example, a pointer exists from a first type of object to second type of object and even one instance of an object of the second type becomes unexpectedly unavailable, such that the relationship is no longer valid for the corresponding instance of an object of the first type, the relationship fails for all associated objects of the affected types, resulting in a broader failure of one or more client contexts or other applications or processes that had been using the affected objects.
In some modern environments, the set of available data objects may change dynamically during runtime, e.g., as data sources (removable media, mobile systems and devices, etc.) are added or removed from access via a network. As such, there is a need for a way to define and manage more flexibly relationships to target data objects, including across multiple and potentially dynamically changing persistent data stores, so that processes associated with such relationships do not fail as the universe of available data objects changes at runtime.
The inventors are Bill Baumgarner, Christopher M. Hanson, Ronald Denis Lue-Sang, Stephen E. Miner, Benjamin Trumbull, Melissa Turner and Andreas Wendker. The graphic below illustrates an embodiment of a persistent store coordinator configured to manage dynamically multiple persistent data stores.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
