Efficient computation of aggregated data in containers supporting item level access control

• Main Author: TEREK F. SONER
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 12.11.2002
• Edition: 7
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; PHYSICS

A computer system data container such as a directory or data folder includes various items (e.g., e-mail messages) having item level security controls. In this invention, the computer system ignores files for which the viewer has no viewing rights when summary data about the data container is displayed on the viewer's monitor. For each item level security setting, a running total is kept of an aggregate property (e.g., count of, size of) of all the items in the directory or folder of that security setting. Changes to the running total occur as items are added or deleted, or edited if the aggregate property is the size of all items of that security setting. Regardless of what the aggregated data is, the computer system adds only the running totals for which the user has viewing rights when computing summary data. Thus, the user cannot infer anything about non-viewable items from the summary data.