Patent ID: 8595194

Claim:
A method for calculating time decay associated with arriving data objects, the method comprising: determining a forward age associated with a data object arriving at a data management system based on a difference between an arrival time of the data object at the data management system and a landmark time prior to the arrival time; determining a decay age associated with the data object based on a difference between a current time and the arrival time of the data object; recording the forward age in a memory media; and calculating a time decay associated with the data object, wherein the calculating a time decay associated with the data object includes: and weighting a parameter value associated with the data object with a decay function based on the decay age and the forward age, wherein the forward age associated with the data object does not change as time elapses, wherein the decay function is selected from an exponential function, a polynomial function, and a landmark window function; calculating an age factor for the data object based on the weighted parameter value; ranking a plurality of data objects object based on the age factor to determine a highest and lowest ranking data object; and calculating a forward time decayed holistic aggregate based on the weighted parameter values of a plurality of data objects, wherein the forward time decayed holistic aggregate is selected from a forward time decayed heavy hitter and a forward time decayed quantile.