Unified File Search Across Cloud Storage Systems
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing file search systems across different third-party cloud storage systems are not interconnected, making it difficult to perform unified searches across multiple platforms with varying protocols, leading to fragmented search results.
Innovation Solution
A user device and server system that generates search parameters, metadata, and requests to combine search results from local and remote storage systems, creating unified search metadata by transmitting and receiving metadata across different cloud storage systems, regardless of their protocols, to provide a comprehensive search interface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If separate search systems are used for each cloud storage platform, then each system can maintain its own protocol and implementation simplicity, but unified search capability across multiple platforms is lost and search results become fragmented
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a unified search interface that acts as an intermediary between the user and multiple cloud storage platforms. This interface receives search requests, translates them into platform-specific protocols, and aggregates results from different sources. The intermediary layer handles protocol conversion and result unification without requiring changes to the underlying storage systems, thus maintaining adaptability while enabling unified search capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The search system is designed with universal functionality to handle multiple cloud storage platforms through a single interface. The system can adapt to different protocols and storage systems while providing consistent search capabilities. This multi-functionality allows the same search interface to work across diverse platforms without requiring separate search implementations for each system.
2Loss of information
If a unified search interface is implemented across multiple cloud storage systems, then comprehensive search results are achieved, but protocol differences and integration complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the search system into distinct modular components: a unified search interface layer, protocol translation layers for each platform, and result aggregation modules. Each component handles specific tasks independently, making the overall system more manageable despite dealing with multiple protocols. The segmentation allows each module to be developed and maintained separately, reducing integration complexity while maintaining comprehensive search coverage.
3Loss of information
If multiple search requests are transmitted to different storage systems simultaneously, then comprehensive search coverage is achieved, but search time and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-processing search requests and preparing protocol-specific translations before actual search execution. The unified search interface can cache search parameters and pre-establish connections to multiple storage systems, reducing the time required during actual search operations. This preliminary preparation enables faster execution when comprehensive multi-platform searches are needed.
Data Source
AI summary
The unified file search may be performed by a user device. The user device includes a processor and a memory. The memory includes code segments that when executed by the processor cause the processor to generate a search parameter; generate a first search metadata based on data stored in the memory and the search parameter, the first search metadata representing the data stored in the memory; generate a search request based on the search parameter; transmit the search request to at least one associated remote data storage resource; receive a second search metadata from the at least one associated remote data storage resource, the second search metadata representing data stored in the at least one associated remote data storage resource; and generate a unified search metadata including the first search metadata and the second search metadata.