Patent ID: 7853701

Claim:
A computer implemented system comprising: a plurality of servers for use in providing data in response to requests, wherein each of the servers are operable to communicate with one another; a plurality of partitions defined within the plurality of servers, wherein each of the partitions includes one or more of the servers; a plurality of connection pools, including a connection pool at each of the servers in each partition, which allows that server to make a connection with other servers in other partitions, data, provided as a plurality of portions and stored in the plurality of partitions, wherein each partition includes a different portion of the data, and wherein within each of the partitions, the portion of the data stored in that partition is copied to every server in that partition; and wherein when a request is received by a first server in a first partition, the first server opens connections to at least a second server in a second partition, by obtaining the connections from its connection pool, retrieves the different portion of the data from the second partition, combines the portions of the data from the first and second partitions to create a combined data, and returns the combined data in response to the request.