IP Library › Granted Patent US 7,171,422
Granted Patent B2
US 7,171,422 · App. 10/162,176 · Granted Jan 30, 2007

Caching system for nested archives

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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 7,171,422
App. No.
10/162,176
Filed
Jun 3, 2002
Granted
Jan 30, 2007
Kind
B2
Art Unit
2168
USPC
707/102
Abstract

A representation of nested electronic data archives permitting archived resources to be efficiently accessed during use is disclosed. A method and system is disclosed which selectively expands and efficiently stores the contents of an archive during use. In a preferred embodiment, the system comprises a nested associative data structure to store compressed and uncompressed portions of a nested archive.

Claims (18)

1. A method for caching nested archives, comprising the steps of: generating a first associative data structure;

in the first associative data structure, associating data representing an unexpanded archive with a string representing the name of the archive;

accessing the unexpanded archive using the name of the archive and the first associative data structure;

expanding the archive;

generating a second associative data structure;

in the second associative data structure, associating one or more resources contained in the archive with one or more names of the one or more resources;

in the first associative data structure, associating data representing the second associative data structure with the string representing the name of the archive; and

wherein, for each expanded archive in said nested archive that is represented as a new associative data structure, a new entry is inserted in said first associative data structure using a name of the new archive as a key and a pointer or reference to the new archive as a value.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data representing an unexpanded archive comprises a pointer to an archive file.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data representing the second associative data structure comprises an object reference to the second associative data structure.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the unexpanded archive comprises a Java jar.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the unexpanded archive comprises a tape archive.

6. A method for caching nested archives comprising the steps of:

storing data representing an unexpanded nested archive in a top-level hash map;

expanding the unexpanded nested archive the first time a resource contained within the unexpanded nested archive is accessed; and

replacing the data representing the unexpanded nested archive in the top-level hash map with data representing at least one expanded portion of the archive; and

for each new archive that is expanded and represented by a new hash map, inserting a new entry in said top-level hash map using a name of the new expanded archive as a key and a pointer or reference to said new hash map.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the resource name is an URL.