Patent ID: 6216140
Filing Date: 2001-04-10
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
A method for the efficient copying and sharing of large amounts of hierarchically organized information, comprising the steps:a) creating one or more virtual copies of a hierarchy to be shared by a plurality of versions and having a plurality of items by adding a new link to the root of the hierarchy for each virtual copy of the one or more virtual copies to be created, wherein a revision history of each item of the plurality of items indicates any changes that have been made to each item and wherein each virtual copy of said shared hierarchy thus created is used by a corresponding version of the plurality of versions;b) deciding that a first portion of the hierarchy is to be modified;c) identifying a second portion of the hierarchy if the first portion of the hierarchy does not include the root of the hierarchy, of which the first hierarchy is a sub-hierarchy, that includes the root of the hierarchy;d) unsharing the first portion of the hierarchy to be modified by first copying the second portion of the hierarchy if the second portion has been identified and is not already unshared up to the root of the hierarchy and then copying the first portion of the hierarchy if the first portion of the hierarchy is not already unshared to generate an unshared portion of the hierarchy; ande) modifying one or more items of the plurality of items of the unshared portion of the hierarchy, wherein the revision history for each said modified item is updated to reflect the modification.