Patent ID: 8825594

Claim:
A method for retrieval of presence metadata, the method comprising: receiving a request from a first client to edit a document file; sending short-term check out metadata to the first client to begin an editing session; and writing a transition ID to a transition table stored in a cache, wherein the presence of the transition ID in the cache indicates that a document has switched from a single-client mode to a multi-client mode; receiving a ping from the first client to determine if the transition ID is in the cache; if the transition ID is not in the cache, receiving a plurality of pings from the first client at regular intervals, and saving the document to a server a plurality of times without incurring reads/writes to a database, and if the transition ID is in the cache, receiving a plurality of pings from the first client to collect a lock table from a database to identify a second client, and in a separate web service request, receiving the second client's lock information.