Patent ID: 8417664

Claim:
A method for unloading a database, comprising: determining a start address and an end address of a data set in a database, the database comprising information organized in a hierarchical sequence, the database stored on a storage device in a physical sequence; copying the data set in physical sequence from the database to a data space, the data set comprising a plurality of continuous physical storage units, wherein copying the data set in physical sequence comprises reading the data set from the determined start address to the determined end address and writing the data set to the data space; determining whether a segment of database data is located in the data space; in response to determining that the segment of the database data is located in the data space, unloading the segment of the database data from the data space in hierarchical sequence; and in response to determining that the segment of the database data is not located in the data space, unloading the segment of the database data from the database.