Separation of database transactions

• US 20030217064A1
• Filed: 05/17/2002
• Published: 11/20/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 05/17/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sun Microsystems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Walters, Arthur P.
• Granted Patent: US 6,862,593 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/466 Transaction processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5055 considering software capabilities, i.e. software resources associated or available to the machine
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99938 Concurrency, e.g. lock management in shared database

Abstract

According to an embodiment of the invention, a database is separated into at least a first partition and a second partition. An instruction comprising access to the database is received. An address is determined for the instruction, with a first address being assigned if the access involves a read of data in the database and a second address being assigned if the access involves a write of data in the database. The instruction is executed on the first partition of the database if the instruction involves a read of data and on the second partition of the database if the instruction involves a write of data.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

separating a database into at least a first partition and a second partition;

receiving an instruction, the instruction including access to the database;

determining an address for the instruction, a first address being assigned if the access involves reading data from the database and a second address being assigned if the access involves writing data to the database; and

executing the instruction on the first partition of the database if the instruction involves reading data from the database and executing the instruction on the second partition of the database if the instruction involves writing data to the database.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first partition of the database comprises one or more read-only servers.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the second partition of the database comprises one or more read-write servers.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising updating data on the one or more read-only servers after performance of a write operation to the one or more read-write servers.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the database comprises a load balancer, the load balancer balancing operational loads on the database.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein a mapping file maps the addresses for instructions to either the first address or the second address.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the mapping file is an XML mapping file.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the first address and the second address are virtual addresses.

9. A machine-readable medium having stored thereon data representing sequences of instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

separating a database into at least a first partition and a second partition;

receiving an instruction, the instruction including access to the database;

determining an address for the instruction, a first address being assigned if the access involves reading data from the database and a second address being assigned if the access involves writing data to the database; and

executing the instruction on the first partition of the database if the instruction involves reading data from the database and executing the instruction on the second partition of the database if the instruction involves writing data to the database.

10. The medium of claim 9, wherein the first partition of the database comprises one or more read-only servers.

11. The medium of claim 10, wherein the second partition of the database comprises one or more read-write servers.

12. The medium of claim 11, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

copying data modifications from the one or more read-write servers to the one or more read-only servers after performance of a write operation.

13. The medium of claim 9, wherein the database comprises a load balancer, the load balancer balancing operational loads on the database.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein a mapping file maps the addresses for instructions to either the first address or the second address.

15. The medium of claim 14 wherein the mapping file is an XML mapping file.

16. The medium of claim 9, wherein the first address and the second address are virtual addresses.

17. A system comprising:

a database, the database being comprised of;

a database server containing a read-write version of a set of data, and

one or more database servers containing a read-only version of the set of data; and

a file, the file directing a read operation for the database to a first address and directing a write operation for the database to a second address.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the first address and the second address are virtual addresses.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the system operates on the Internet and the virtual addresses are virtual IP addresses.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the database further comprises a load balancer, the load balancer balancing the operational load on the database servers.

21. The system of claim 17, wherein the file is a mapping file.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the mapping file contains a first tag for a read operation and a second tag for a write operation.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the mapping file is an XML mapping file.

24. A system comprising:

a means for separating a database into at least a first partition and a second partition;

a means for receiving an instruction, the instruction including a database access request;

a means for assigning an address to the instruction, a first address being assigned to the instruction if the instruction includes writing data to the database, a second address being assigned to the instruction if the instruction includes reading data from the database;

a means for directing the instruction to the first partition of the database if the first address is assigned to the instruction; and

a means for directing the instruction to the second partition of the database if the second address is assigned to the instruction.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein the first address and the second address are virtual addresses.

26. The system of claim 24, wherein the first partition of the database comprises one or more database servers that are operable to perform database write operations.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the second partition of the database comprises one or more database servers that are operable to perform database read operations.

28. The system of claim 27, further comprising a means for balancing the operational load on the database servers.

29. The system of claim 24, further comprising a means of updating data in the second partition of the database upon data being modified in the first partition of the database.