Patent ID: 7660836
Filing Date: 2010-02-09
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for determining whether content of an object has changed, comprising: under control of a backup system executing at a client computer having a processor, requesting opaque object attributes and a data identifier by issuing a command to an object system module executing at the client computer, wherein the backup system is not able to interpret the opaque object attributes to identify opaque object attributes that are relevant to determining whether to perform incremental backup, and wherein the object system module is able to interpret the opaque object attributes to identify object attributes that are relevant to determining whether to perform the incremental backup; under control of the object system module, generating the data identifier by: selecting a set of relevant opaque object attributes from a set of object attributes for the object, wherein the selected set of relevant opaque object attributes indicate at least one of the content of the object or a relevant opaque object attribute has changed, wherein at least one object attribute is not relevant to determining whether to perform the incremental backup and is not in the set of relevant opaque object attributes; and generating the data identifier by generating a checksum on the selected set of relevant opaque object attributes; and under control of the backup system: comparing the received data identifier with a previously stored data identifier that was previously generated by the object system module; in response to determining that the received data identifier and the previously stored data identifier do not match, in response to determining that the received data identifier and the previously stored data identifier do match, determining that the content of the object has not changed and that incremental backup of the content of the object does not need to be performed.