Patent ID: 7677441

Claim:
A database updates system comprising: a processor configured via executing computer executable components stored in a computer readable memory, the computer executable components comprising: a receiver component that receives a database update transaction; a process component that reads stale data from a cache, wherein the stale data satisfies one or more relaxed freshness constraints associated with the transaction at read time, and the process component processes the transaction, the one or more freshness constraints automatically generated for each update transaction, wherein each data item or group of data has metadata associated therewith identifying when the data item or group of data was last modified and until when it is valid to facilitate definition and enforcement of relaxed freshness constraints; a verification component which verifies that the one or more relaxed freshness constraints associated with the transaction are satisfied during processing and at commit time, wherein at least one of the relaxed freshness constraints requires that an aggregate computed over a read set of the transaction be within a specified percentage of a recent value, wherein the verification component enforces a time-drift bound relaxed freshness constraint via a determination of whether the last modified time of the most recently modified data item read by the transaction is less than the minimum time a data item read by the transaction is valid until plus a specified time period; and an update component for updating the database with data from the cache, wherein the relaxed freshness constraints are defined through snapshot consistency.