Patent ID: 7831620

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of managing execution of a query against a partitioned database having a plurality of data partitions, each data partition containing different data relative to the other data partitions, comprising: in response to a request from a requester, issuing a query for execution against each of the plurality of data partitions, resulting in separate, parallel instances of the query being executed against each respective data partition; receiving a query result from at least some of the plurality of data partitions; determining whether a complete query result is returned for the query, based on query results already returned by the executions of the respective query against the at least some of the data partitions, before execution of the query has completed against each of the plurality of data partitions; upon determining that the complete query result is returned for the query before execution of the query has completed against each of the plurality of data partitions, terminating execution of the query on at least one of the plurality of data partitions, wherein terminating execution of the query on at least one of the plurality of data partitions comprises terminating execution of the query on each data partition of the plurality of data partitions for which a result set has not yet been returned; and returning the complete query result to the requester.