Patent ID: 7051245

Claim:
A method for handling out-of-sequence data supplied by a real-time feed, comprising: receiving data on a real-time basis; checking if the data is out-of-sequence based on time stamps associated with the data; wherein the data includes a plurality of entries having the same time stamp; if the data contains out-of-sequence data, inserting the out-of-sequence data in an unordered list: if the data contains in-sequence data, inserting the in-sequence data in an ordered list; flushing the in-sequence data to a database; checking the unordered list for unflushed data; if the unflushed data is found in the unordered list, flushing the unflushed data to the database; ordering the in-sequence data and the out-of-sequence data that have been flushed to the database, in a predetermined sequence based on time stamps associated with the data; making the in-sequence data available for real-time query prior to flushing to the database; and making the flushed data in the database available for processing.