Patent ID: 8156082

Claim:
In a high performance transactional database system, an improved method for managing temporary data, the method comprising: establishing a shared disk cluster (SDC) database system comprising a plurality of computer systems (nodes) clustered together to function as a single system that manages a single shared database disk image stored on a common collection of disks that is shared among the nodes (shared storage), wherein temporary data is utilized by one or more sessions on one or more nodes of the shared disk cluster for storing intermediate results of query processing, procedural processing, or application processing; dividing temporary data into two types by: designating temporary data that is restricted to local use by a database session of a node to be private temporary data; and designating temporary data that is shared among multiple database sessions on one or more nodes to be global temporary data; storing the temporary data by: for temporary data designated as global temporary data, creating a global temporary database on the shared storage, said global temporary database comprising a temporary database accessible to all nodes of the shared disk cluster, said global temporary database employing write ahead logging so that changes to said global temporary database are recovered upon failure of a node; for temporary data designated as private temporary data, creating a local temporary database accessible to only a single node (owner node) of the shared disk cluster, said local temporary database not employing write ahead logging so that changes to said local temporary database are lost upon failure of the owner node; binding an application to the local temporary database on the owner node for providing the application with local temporary storage when the application is connected to the owner node; and storing temporary data used by the application in the local temporary database without requiring use of write ahead logging for transactional recovery of the temporary data used by the application, wherein the temporary data used by the application is discarded when the application is no longer connected to the owner node.