Patent ID: 7139772

Claim:
A method for managing data, comprising: maintaining a plurality of persistent data items on persistent storage accessible to a plurality of nodes, the persistent data items including a particular data item stored at a particular location on said persistent storage; assigning exclusive ownership of each of the persistent data items to one of the nodes, wherein a particular node of said plurality of nodes is assigned exclusive ownership of said particular data item; when any node wants an operation performed that involves said particular data item, the node that desires the operation to be performed ships the operation to the particular node for the particular node to perform the operation on the particular data item while said particular data item continues to reside at said particular location; reassigning ownership of the particular data item from the particular node to another node without moving the particular data item from said particular location on said persistent storage; after the reassignment, when any node wants an operation performed that involves said particular data item, the node that desires the operation to be performed ships the operation to said other node for the other node to perform the operation on the particular data item while said particular data item continues to reside at said particular location, wherein: said persistent storage is a first persistent storage of a plurality of persistent storages used by a multi-node database system, the method further comprises reassigning ownership of a second data item from a first node that has access to said first persistent storage to a second node that has access to a second persistent storage but does not have access to said first persistent storage, and the method further comprises reassigning ownership of the second data item by moving the second data item from said first persistent storage to said second persistent storage.