Patent ID: 7693864

Claim:
A method for generating and maintaining a computer database, the method comprising: generating a first persistent consistency point of a file system; reading a first inode file of the first persistent consistency point to obtain an initial set of metadata; storing the initial set of metadata to the computer database; generating a second persistent consistency point of the file system; performing an inode file differencing procedure, wherein the inode file differencing procedure selects a first indirect block pointed to by a root inode of the first persistent consistency point and determining if a corresponding indirect block is located at a same position in the second persistent consistency point; in response to determining that the corresponding indirect block is located at the same position in the second persistent consistency point, comparing, by the inode file differencing procedure, pointers in the first persistent consistency point and pointers in the second persistent consistency point to obtain a set of changed metadata, and then performing the inode file differencing procedure on all remaining indirect blocks referenced by the root inode; in response to determining that the corresponding indirect block is not located at the same position in the second persistent consistency point, performing the inode differencing procedure on all remaining indirect blocks referenced by the root inode; storing the set of changed metadata to a log file in response to obtaining the changed set of metadata; and reading the log file to update the computer database.