Shadow Items for Selective Content Storage in Sync Systems
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Solution Overview
Problem
Content management systems face challenges in efficiently managing storage allocation for synchronized content items on client devices, leading to reduced space for other items and applications due to large shared content storage requirements.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a constrained synchronization system that uses shadow items to represent content items, allowing selective downloading and storage management based on user access patterns, storage allocation, and idle device states, thereby optimizing storage usage and improving device performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If all shared content items are synchronized to client devices, then content accessibility and synchronization completeness are improved, but storage capacity available for other items and applications is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments content items into two distinct types: local content items stored entirely on the client device, and shadow content items that are synchronized with the content management system but not fully stored locally. This segmentation allows the system to maintain synchronization completeness for all content items while significantly reducing the storage capacity consumed on client devices, as shadow items only require minimal metadata storage rather than full content storage.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates shadow copies of content items that reference the original content stored on the content management system. These shadow items contain metadata and references to the actual content rather than duplicating the full content locally. This copying mechanism enables clients to access and synchronize all shared content items while consuming minimal local storage space, effectively resolving the contradiction between synchronization completeness and storage capacity.
2Quantity of substance
If shadow items are used to represent content items, then storage space is reduced, but access speed and availability may be affected
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by proactively converting shadow items to local content items based on predicted user access patterns. The system analyzes historical access data, recency of access, and user behavior to identify shadow items that are likely to be accessed soon, and pre-converts these to full local copies before they are actually needed. This preliminary conversion ensures that when users access frequently or recently used content, the data is already available locally at full speed, eliminating any potential access speed degradation while maintaining storage space efficiency for less frequently accessed items.
Data Source
AI summary
A content management system synchronizes content items across client computing systems connected by a network. Each client device has a storage allocation for synchronized shared content items. If the storage allocation for shared content items on a client device is exceeded by the request to add or edit a content item such that it is enlarged, a client application or the host of content management system selects content items to remove from residence on the client device but keep remotely on content management system. Upon removal of the selected content items, the client application creates shadow items, representing the content item but only containing the metadata of the content item. This creates sufficient space while maintaining user access to all synchronized shared content items. When a shadow item is requested by an application running on the client device the client application may approve or deny the request.