Patent ID: 7685145

Claim:
An apparatus comprising, a processing device to automatically perform a series of iterative database configuration transformations to locally change a database configuration of a database, the processing device adapted to: make a determination that a first database configuration of the database has grown to a size that is greater than a size limitation for the first database configuration; automatically select and apply a first database configuration transformation from a plurality of database configuration transformations to the first database configuration in response to the determination to produce a refined database configuration having a smaller size than the first database configuration, wherein the first database configuration transformation is selected based on processing efficiency for a workload of the first database configuration; optimize the workload according to the refined database configuration after the first database configuration transformation is applied; and progressively select and apply one or more additional database configuration transformations to refined database configurations automatically until it is determined that a size of a current local database configuration of the database is not greater than the size limitation of the first database configuration, wherein each additional database configuration transformation is selected based on processing efficiency for an optimized workload that is re-optimized after each additional database configuration transformation is applied, wherein the database configuration transformations include at least one of a merge process and a reduction process, the merge process comprising determining a first index/view and a second index/view and producing a merged index/view by identifying and eliminating one or more redundancies that may exist between the first index/view and the second index/view, the reduction process comprising determining a first index/view and deleting a first portion from the first index/view to create a reduced index/view that is recreatable from the reduced index/view based on a set of rules.