US 11,809,386 B2
Schema change operations
Gokcen Iskender, Redmond, WA (US); and Kadir Ozdemir, San Jose, CA (US)
Assigned to Salesforce, Inc., San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed by salesforce.com, inc., San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed on Aug. 30, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/460,495.
Prior Publication US 2023/0066989 A1, Mar. 2, 2023
Int. Cl. G06F 16/20 (2019.01); G06F 16/21 (2019.01); G06F 16/23 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/211 (2019.01) [G06F 16/2379 (2019.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method, comprising:
maintaining, by a server computer system, a logical name and a current physical name corresponding to an existing database object, wherein the logical name points to the current physical name of the existing database object such that the server computer system responds to read requests specifying the logical name using the existing database object;
receiving, by the server computer system, a schema change request that specifies the logical name and one or more data format changes for the existing database object;
performing, by the server computer system in response to the schema change request, a schema change operation that includes:
creating a new database object having a new physical name;
copying existing data from the existing database object to the new database object while transforming the copied data according to the one or more data format changes specified in the schema change request;
mirroring newly received writes directed to the logical name to both the existing database object and the new database object;
after completing the copying, causing the logical name to point to the new physical name instead of the current physical name; and
after completing the schema change operation, responding, by the server computer system, to subsequent database queries specifying the logical name from the new database object.