Patent ID: 7313557

Claim:
A method for managing locks on files or regions of files located on a file server in response to locking requests from various file access protocols, comprising: defining each locking request in terms of actions, each action defining a class of actions performed on a file or continuing states for the file, and associating each action with a bit position of an action set; determining compatibility of locking requests from the various file access protocols without reference to the protocols with which the locking requests are associated; deciding when each locking request should be granted, revoked or released in response to the step of determining; defining a summary disposition as comprising an active action set for active bits and a deny action set for denial bits; for each file that has at least one lock, maintaining a plurality of summary dispositions that combine sets of action dispositions for granted locks; defining an action summary as comprising a hard summary disposition used to summarize dispositions for all granted hard locks and an all summary disposition used to summarize dispositions of all granted locks, including soft locks as wells as hard locks; granting locking requests that are compatible with the action summary, wherein the locking request is compatible with union of all granted locks in action summary; and denying locking requests that are incompatible with the action summary.