Appeal No. 2002-1812
Application 08/861,181
OPINION
Appellants argue that Britton does not disclose the specific
commit sequence where "the commit of the send operation is only
performed in response to a positive confirmation of the message
receipt, and the positive confirmation is only transmitted when
the message receipt has been committed" (Br4-5). That is,
claim 1 calls for a first commit operation at the receiver,
transmitting a positive confirmation, followed by a second commit
operation at the sender. It is argued that in Britton the commit
phase is performed separately by all the resources in response to
a single commit instruction which follows a prepare phase, and
"[t]here is no disclosure in Britton et al of confirmation of
performance of a first commit operation being required before
performing a second commit operation" (Br5).
The examiner finds (EA4-5):
Britton teaches ... [commit processing] (a two phase commit
protocol) of two logically linked local units of work
including: the messages (update message sent from 56A to 56D
in commit phase), commit the second unit of work (56D
updates file 78D), transmit a positive confirmation of
receipt (reply from 56D to 56A indicating it completed the
work/request), commit the first unit of work (56A
commits/updates 78A, 78B). See col. 15, line 39 - col. 16,
line 34. The sequence of operation is shown in the flow of
events in col. 15, line 39 - col. 16, line 34.
Since appellants and the examiner disagree on the teachings
of Britton, we make the following findings based on the portions
of Britton relied on by the examiner. A syncpoint architecture
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