Shadow Items for Constrained Content Synchronization Storage
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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 storage on the client device and shifting storage-intensive items to the content management system, with features like predicted user access and idle-state triggered content management to optimize storage usage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If content management systems synchronize all shared content items to client devices, then all users have access to shared content, but the storage space consumed on client devices increases substantially
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments content items into two types: shadow items (lightweight metadata representations) and full content items. Shadow items are stored on client devices to maintain accessibility information, while full content items are stored only on the content management system. This segmentation allows the system to maintain content accessibility while dramatically reducing storage space consumption on client devices.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates shadow items as simplified copies of content items. These shadow items contain essential metadata and references but not the actual full content data. By using these shadow item copies, the system maintains the ability to access and identify content without requiring full content duplication on all client devices, thus resolving the storage space contradiction.
2Productivity
If client devices store all synchronized content items locally, then content can be accessed without network requests, but the amount of storage available for other items and applications is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments content storage by maintaining shadow items locally on client devices for quick identification and access metadata, while deferring full content storage to the content management system. This allows clients to maintain fast content access through local shadow item references while preserving storage space for other applications and items.
Solution Approach 2:
The shadow item acts as an intermediary between the client device and the full content item. Instead of storing the full content locally (consuming valuable storage space) or requiring direct network access for every content request, the shadow item mediates by providing local metadata access while pointing to the remote full content, thus balancing access speed with storage conservation.
3Reliability
If the system downloads all content items to client devices, then content availability is maximized, but the network bandwidth and download time required increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the content download process by only downloading shadow items (lightweight metadata) rather than full content items. This segmentation dramatically reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded and stored locally, thereby reducing download time and network bandwidth requirements while maintaining content availability through the shadow item references.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary action by pre-storing shadow items on client devices before full content items are needed. These shadow items contain the necessary metadata and references to identify and locate full content items on the content management system. This preliminary preparation allows for rapid content retrieval without requiring large downloads, thus reducing overall download time while ensuring content availability.
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.