Patent ID: 8756195

Claim:
A method for identifying changes in data sets, the method comprising: receiving, by a processor of an electronic flight bag aboard an aircraft, an ending version for a data set for the electronic flight bag, the ending version sent by a source system outside of the aircraft and connected to the aircraft by a wireless transmission system; identifying, by the processor, a beginning version for the data set for the electronic flight bag; comparing, by the processor, the ending version for the data set with the beginning version for the data set; calculating, by the processor, a number of differences between the ending version and the beginning version; creating, by the processor, a data structure in a computer-readable storage of the electronic flight bag that identifies the number of differences between the ending version and the beginning version; adding, by the processor, a number of files to the data structure using the number of differences identified to form an update file, wherein the update file comprises a number of delta files, a number of new files, and a list of a number of unchanged files, wherein responsive to identifying a number of differences between an ending version of a data set and a beginning version of the data set, determining whether there are new files in the ending version, wherein the new files are a number of files identified only in the ending version; determining, by the processor, whether there are changed files in the ending version, wherein the changed files are a number of pairs of files, wherein the number of pairs of files are distributed so that a first file in a file pair is in the ending version of the data set and a second file in the file pair is in the beginning version of the data set, and wherein the first file and the second file have a number of differences; responsive to a determination that there are new files in the ending version, adding the new files to the update file; responsive to adding the delta files to the update file, sending the update file to the electronic flight bag aboard the aircraft via the wireless transmission system; loading the update file in the electronic flight bag; and replacing in the electronic flight bag the target data directory with the ending version directory.