Patent ID: 7707138

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for processing a request, comprising: under control of a backup application executing on a computer including a processor, identifying one or more columns of a table to be used by a row based operation; creating a row map that includes indicators that are set to TRUE for the identified one or more columns that are to be used by the row based operation and that includes indicators that are set to FALSE for columns that are not used by the row based operation, wherein the row map includes an indicator for each column in the table; generating the row based operation implemented as a column function with a sourceRow argument and a row map argument identifying the row map; and forwarding the row based operation having the row map as an argument to a database abstraction component; and under control of the database abstraction component that abstracts database access strategies from the backup application that is unaware of the database access strategies, using the row based operation to generate a database statement, wherein the row map is used to identify the one or more columns that are used to generate a portion of the database statement by: for an update operation, wherein the sourceRow argument specifies key values for key columns, using the identified one or more columns in a SET clause in the database statement and the key values and the key columns in a WHERE clause of the database statement; and for a fetch operation, using the identified one or more columns in a WHERE clause for the database statement.