Patent ID: 8756193

Claim:
A method for use in a computing system, the method comprising: initiating an operation to store a plurality of objects from a memory to persistent storage; wherein said operation comprises: accessing an object of the plurality of objects; in response to determining an object identifier used to uniquely identify the object from each other object of the plurality of objects has already been assigned to the object and is stored within the object, storing the object to persistent storage; in response to determining an object identifier has not been assigned to the object: assigning a new object identifier to the object used to uniquely identify the object from each other object of the plurality of objects; storing the new object identifier in the object; and storing the object in persistent storage; maintaining a temporary data structure including a plurality of entries, wherein each of the plurality of entries associates a new object identifier with a pointer to a memory location where a corresponding object resides and a data member of the corresponding object; wherein storing the new object identifier for the object within the object comprises: replacing existing data in the object with the new object identifier; storing the new object identifier in a given entry of the temporary data structure; storing the existing data replaced by the new object identifier in the given entry; and storing a pointer to the memory location where the object resides in the given entry.