Patent ID: 8001539

Claim:
A method, executed by a central processing unit (CPU), of managing historical data comprising: receiving a compiled application program including a definition of at least one data class having at least one field; receiving a declarative specification including a definition of at least one historical metatag associated with the at least one field and historical metadata indicating a value for the historical metatag; generating one or more storage representations of the at least one data class based on the at least one historical metatag and the historical metadata associated therewith; generating configuring instructions for configuring a database in accordance with the one or more storage representations; generating an enhanced compiled application program including instructions for accessing data in the configured database; generating a historical updater program based on the one or more storage representations for updating the data in the database based on the historical metadata; configuring the database in accordance with the configuring instructions and storing therein data in accordance with the one or more storage representations; executing the enhanced compiled application program to access the database so as to retrieve historical data therefrom; and executing the historical updater program to update the data in the database based on the historical metadata, wherein the updating of the database takes place asynchronously with accessing the database; wherein a historical metatag comprises a relative lifetime of each field, and the historical metadata provides one or more values for the relative lifetime required for each field to be maintained in a particular form in the database.