Patent ID: 7783664

Claim:
In a computing environment comprising a lease coordinator, a data object, and a plurality of client devices, a method for protecting consistency of properties of the data object, the method comprising: by each of at least a subset of the plurality of client devices, sending to the lease coordinator a self value representative of that client device's intended use of the data object; by the lease coordinator, receiving at least a subset of the self values sent by the plurality of client devices; by the lease coordinator, calculating, for a target client device, another value representative of an aggregation of the respective self values of the others of the subset of the plurality of client devices, the other value indicating which of a plurality of access modes are permissible for use by the target client device, wherein each other value is protected by another read lease controlling whether the client is authorized to observe the other value, and wherein the lease coordinator grants the other read lease to the target client device in an event at least one other client has a self value set TRUE, or in an event no other client has a self value set FALSE and none of the respective other clients is authorized to change the self value to TRUE; and by the lease coordinator, sending, to the target client device, the other value calculated for the target client device such that usage patterns of particular other clients are hidden from the target client device.