Patent ID: 8843449

Claim:
A general purpose computer comprising: at least one processor; and at least one storage device tangibly embodying program instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the general purpose computer to at least: for each of a plurality of pages associated with a target index: write the page to external storage; and store a time of the writing the page to the external storage as an externalization time of the page; and after performing the writing and the storing: determine which pages in a buffer memory are associated with the target index; identify an externalization point of the target index, the externalization point corresponding to an oldest change to a page associated with the target index that has not been written to the external storage; for each of the pages associated with the target index that is stored in the buffer memory, if the externalization point of the target index is earlier than the externalization time of the page, write the page from the buffer memory to an output file; and for each of the pages associated with the target index that is not stored in the buffer memory, and each of the pages associated with the target index and stored in the buffer memory for which the externalization point of the target index is later than the externalization time of the page, copy the page from the external storage to the output file without bringing the page into the buffer memory.