Patent ID: 8521706

Claim:
A method comprising: concurrently maintaining metadata defining an old edition of one or more objects within a database and metadata defining a new edition of the same one or more objects within the database; concurrently maintaining as a view, referenced by a particular view label, an old view edition of the view, associated by said metadata with the old edition, and a new view edition of the view, associated by said metadata with the new edition; wherein the old view edition defines a view column, referenced by a view column label, to be mapped to a first column in a table in the database; wherein the new view edition defines the same view column, referenced by the same view column label, to be mapped to a second column that is different than the first column and that is in the table in the database; and wherein the second column comprises data values that have been calculated based on corresponding data values in the first column; executing a first query that references the view by the particular view label and that references the view column by the view column label, wherein executing the first query includes: in response to determining that the first query is associated with the new edition: accessing the view column through the new view edition, thereby accessing data in the second column in the table; and performing the first query by at least accessing the view column through the second column; and concurrently to executing the first query, executing a second query that references the view by the particular view label and that references the view column by the view column label, wherein executing the second query includes: in response to determining that the second query is associated with the old edition: accessing the view column through the old view edition, thereby accessing data in the first column in the table; and performing the second query by at least accessing the view column through the first column; and wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.