Patent ID: 7627597

Claim:
A method for maintaining a data warehouse having a plurality of fields for storing data from one or more data sources, comprising: configuring a management component to manage updating the data warehouse on the basis of the usage characteristics indicating fields determined not to be in use, wherein the management component is configured to perform an operation, comprising; monitoring queries issued against the data warehouse; updating, based on the monitored queries, usage characteristics of one or more of the plurality of fields indicative of when the one or more fields were last involved in a query; and selectively updating the data warehouse with data, from one or more of the data sources, for a limited subset of fields involved in the monitored queries within a first predetermined time period, as indicated by the usage characteristics; wherein the configured management component performs the selective updating by differentiating between those fields in the data warehouse that are being queried within the first predetermined time period and those fields in the data warehouse that are not being queried within the first predetermined time period according to the usage characteristics.