Appeal No. 2002-2318
Application 09/652,520
relies on Pirolli to show that “it is well known in the art
to use a threshold value in decision making.” Based on
Pirolli’s teaching, the examiner concludes it would have
been obvious to utilize a descendant threshold value as a
predetermined reference in Pouschine to limit the pre-
computation of data cells [final rejection, page 5; answer,
page 4].
Appellants first contend that Pirolli is non-analogous
art [brief, page 4]. According to appellants, because
Pirolli’s threshold value is used to predict relevant
documents in a web-based application, it has nothing to do
with a multidimensional database or the selective
aggregation of members in a multidimensional data set [id.;
reply brief, page 2]. In response, the examiner argues
Pirolli is analogous because it teaches querying a database
to enable a user to traverse a collection of linked
documents [answer, page 3].
Appellants also argue that even if Pirolli is analogous
art, the examiner’s combination of Pouschine and Pirolli
does not teach the limitations of claim 1 [brief, page 5].
Appellants note that Pirolli’s “activation threshold” is
used for determining the most visited web pages as part of a
web-page prediction process and does not teach or suggest
determining the number of descendants of a member in a
multidimensional database to determine whether an aggregated
data measure should be determined and stored [id.].
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