Patent ID: 7606839

Claim:
A database cluster for providing client connection fail-over, the database cluster comprising: a first computing system comprising: a first management module configured to form a client connection with and receive at least one transaction from a client, and a first database management system (DBMS) in communication with the first management module to receive and execute the at least one transaction on data stored in one or more data files; a replication module configured to record replication data indicating changes made to the data stored in the one or more data files based on the at least one transaction; and a second computing system in communication with the replication module, the second computing system comprising: a second management module configured to receive a copy of the at least one transaction from the first computing system, the second management module being further configured to purge at least one of (i) the copy of the at least one transaction and (ii) the replication data when the copy of the at least one transaction is redundant to the replication data, wherein the second management module is configured to monitor a performance of the first computing system and the first management module is configured to monitor a performance of the second computing system, and wherein when the second management module determines that an unbalanced workload exists between the first and the second computing systems, the second management module transparently assumes the client connection and begins to receive additional transactions from the client to be executed against the one or more data files.