System and method for performing commutative operations in data access systems

• US 20030140029A1
• Filed: 10/01/2002
• Published: 07/24/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 01/18/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Messinger, Adam
• Granted Patent: US 6,898,587 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2365 Ensuring data consistency and integrity
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

An embodiment of the invention allows a software developer or administrator to use their knowledge and/or development of a particular application, to optimize the performance of data access and updates to the database. In order to do this, an embodiment of the invention makes use of the developers knowledge of particular transaction and transaction operations that can be performed in a commutative manner. The overall effect is to perform the operations in a parallel fashion so that one operation does not block or restrict the processing of a second operation. The result is an increase in database access or performance, without any resulting decrease in database reliability.

Claims

1. A system for performing operations upon a database, said operations associated with a plurality of transactions, comprising:

a server in communication with a database, for receiving transaction requests to perform operations to access data within the database;

commutative properties that instruct said server which operations can be performed commutatively;

boundary conditions, for constraining the operation of said operations; and

,

wherein said server processes said plurality of transactions by allowing the operations associated therewith to run commutatively as allowed by said boundary conditions.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the server includes an interface by which certain commutative operations can be selected by a client application.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the server includes an EJB container, and wherein the EJB container includes commutative verbs for use by the client application.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the operations are allowed to run consecutively if they are not specified as commutative properties, or do not meet the boundary conditions.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a client application, wherein the client application can be configured to select a set of commutative operations for preparing said transaction.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the commutative properties and boundary conditions are specified by one or more configuration files.

7. A method for performing commutative operations associated with a plurality of transactions at a database, comprising:

receiving transaction requests to access data at the database;

determining which transaction operations as part of said requests can be performed commutatively;

applying boundary conditions to constrain the operation of said commutative operations; and

,

allowing the operations to run commutatively as allowed by said boundary conditions.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein said step of receiving includes providing an interface by which commutative operations can be selected by a client application.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein said step of receiving includes providing an EJB and an EJB container wherein the EJB container includes commutative verbs for use by the client application.

10. The method of claim 7 further comprising the step of allowing the operations to run consecutively if they do not meet the boundary conditions.

11. The method of claim 7, further comprising the step of configuring a client application to select a set of commutative operations for preparing said transaction.

12. The system of claim 7 wherein the commutative properties and boundary conditions are specified by one or more configuration files.