Appeal No. 95-3872
Application No. 08/171,266
data values from one transaction to another, a desirable feature
also achieved by the instant invention, the prior locking
operations, by locking away data values involved in a current
transaction, also made the data values inaccessible for
processing by another transaction. Thus, serialization delays
resulted as transactions queued up to gain access to certain data
values. Through the use of an aggregation system, without the
use of locking operations, the instant invention is said to
achieve both consistency of data values and the ability to
concurrently read and update a specific data value in different
transactions.
Representative independent claim 8 is reproduced as follows:
8. A method of using an aggregation system, having memory
means for storing a plurality of data values, to read data values
and to perform concurrent updates of data values such that access
to each data value for reading and concurrently updating each
data value is maintained, the method comprising the steps of
storing in the memory means a first relation comprising, for
each of a plurality of numeric data values, a base value and a
time-stamp indicating when the base value was computed,
storing in the memory means a second relation comprising,
for each of said numeric data values, one or more incremental
updates and a time-stamp for each incremental update,
reading a specific numeric data value by
electronically retrieving from the first relation in
the memory means a base value of said specific numeric data
value,
2
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Last modified: November 3, 2007