Patent ID: 7293009

Claim:
A method for maintaining a cached copy of a data item in a database, said method comprising: receiving a request to access the copy of the data item, wherein said data item is stored in the database and wherein said copy of the data item is cached in a computer readable storage medium of a first server; providing read access to the copy of the data item responsive to the request; and updating the copy cached in said first server by reading from the data item stored in the database according to a timeout mechanism; repeatedly performing the receiving, providing and updating steps until an invalidate request is received from a second server to the first server, said invalidate request including identification information that identifies at least one of: the first server, the copy cached in said first server and the data item, wherein the invalidate request instructs the first server to drop a specific copy of data upon receipt of the invalidate request; and dropping the copy of the data item from the computer readable storage medium of said first server if the identification information included in the invalidate request matches identification information assigned to the copy of the data item; and reading the data item from the database and storing a new updated copy of said data item in the computer readable storage medium of said first server upon having received the invalidate request and having dropped the copy of the data item.