Patent ID: 8108339

Claim:
A method of updating a result of a formula stored in a database system, the method comprising: receiving a request to compute an updated result of a first formula, wherein the first formula operates on input data stored in one or more tables of the database system to obtain the updated result; submitting a query to at least one database of the database system in response to receiving the request, wherein the query includes a set of one or more criteria; analyzing results of the query to determine whether the set of criteria are satisfied; evaluating the first formula synchronously to obtain the updated result when the criteria are satisfied; and evaluating the first formula asynchronously to obtain the updated result when the criteria are not satisfied, wherein the updated result is a new result obtained from evaluating the first formula after a previous evaluation of the first formula, wherein evaluating the first formula asynchronously includes: adding the request as a first item to a queue; providing, to a user of the database system, an indication of an inconsistency between input data of the first formula and a custom field value associated with a result of the first formula; evaluating formulas associated with any other items previously added to the queue; and subsequent to the evaluation of the other items, evaluating the first item to obtain the updated result.