Patent ID: 7930297

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for refreshing a materialized view having entries based on rows in a detail table stored in a nonvolatile storage, said detail table divided into multiple sections based on a specified criteria, wherein each section corresponds to a partition in a plurality of partitions and each of said rows belonging to only a single one of the partitions, said method comprising: identifying a modified partition that contains a modified row in the detail table from among the plurality of partitions based on an address in the nonvolatile storage of the modified row; partitioning the materialized view; evaluating a condition to determine if the condition is in one of a plurality of states; when the condition is evaluated to be in a first state, refreshing only the entries in a partition of the materialized view that contains an entry that is based on rows that belong to the modified partition by recalculating data in the entries and storing the recalculated data in the respective entries so that they reflect the modification to the modified row; and when the condition is evaluated to be in a second state, refreshing by deleting all the entries in a partition of the materialized view that contains an entry that is based on the rows that belong to the modified partition and includes an entry based on a row in the detail table that belongs to a partition in the plurality of partitions other than the modified partition.