Patent ID: 7548901

Claim:
A system for delayed fetching of a designated member of a user defined type comprising the designated member and a non-designated member, the system comprising: a processor to execute computer-executable instructions; and memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions for performing steps comprising: receiving from a client an initial fetch request to fetch the user defined type from a data store, the initial fetch request comprising instructions to fetch the non-designated member of the user defined type and to delay fetching of the designated member of the user defined type; examining a UPDATE SEQUENCE MARKER maintained by the data store to identify a time when the initial fetch request was received by the data store; generating a container reference to the user defined type that identifies a path to the user defined type within a data store; retrieving a serialized representation of the user defined type from the data store; removing only the designated member from the serialized representation whereby, after the removal, the non-designated member remains within the serialized representation; attaching the container reference to the serialized representation; generating a query response comprising the serialized representation that comprises the non-designated member, the query response further comprising the attached container reference and the UPDATE SEQUENCE MARKER; sending the query response to the client; receiving from the client a re-fetch request to re-fetch the designated member, the re-fetch request comprising the container reference and the UPDATE SEQUENCE MARKER the re-fetch request indicating a selectable first mode operating to retrieve delayed members at the time of the re-fetch operation and a selectable second mode operating to retrieve delayed members as of the time when the initial fetch was executed; retrieving from the data store a version of the designated member identified by the UPDATE SEQUENCE MARKER based upon a selected mode; and returning the retrieved version of the designated member to the client.