Patent ID: 7624115

Claim:
A method, comprising: in a runtime environment of a computing system, accessing a data field of a first object to retrieve a backward reference to a second object in an object oriented relational database wherein the two objects are in a unidirectional relationship, wherein the second object points to the first object, further wherein the backward reference does not interfere with a relational database schema for the object oriented relational database; storing the backward reference in a memory of the computing system; removing the unidirectional relationship from the memory of the computer system by calling a container persistence management function, by which a persistent management of entity beans associated with a container in which the first and the second objects reside is managed; identifying a third object that has higher priority access to the first object than the second object; adding a new unidirectional relationship between the third object and the first object, wherein the third object points to the first object by calling a container persistence management function, by which the persistence management of entity beans associated with the container in which the third and the first objects reside is managed; and modifying the backward reference stored in the memory of the computing system, by accessing the data field of the first object to replace the backward reference to the second object with a backward reference to the third object.