Patent ID: 7644087

Claim:
A data access system comprising a plurality of computers and a switching network, the plurality of computers respectively comprising multiple locations of physical data storage, the data access system comprising: database units arranged to form virtual partitions, each virtual partition formed from a database unit being independently accessible, said virtual partitions being accessible as addressable channels in an addressing space independent of said physical data storage; decoupling said physical data storage and said virtual partitions by using switched channel networking and creating an intermediate networking structure, wherein said data partitioning is statically mapped to the network channel, and wherein said decoupling data partitions permits reassignment of any given virtual partition between respectively independent locations of said physical data storage while maintaining said accessibility via respective ones of said addressable channels in said independent addressing space; a plurality of data processing units, and said switching network receiving data access requests to said database units as addressable channels of said independent addressing space, obtaining data from said physical data storage in accordance with a most recent reassignment of said database units and switching said data processing units between said virtual partitions to assign data processing capacity dynamically to respective virtual partitions.