Apparatus and method for using incomplete cached balance sets to generate incomplete or complete cached balance sets and balance values

摘要

An apparatus and method allow using incomplete cached balance sets to be used to generate other cached balanced sets in certain circumstances. If a cached balance set is complete, a new cached balance set can be generated from it by condensing the existing cached balance set. If the cached balance set is incomplete, a new cached balance set can be created from the existing incomplete cached balance set if the query key meets certain criteria and if the existing cached balance set was condensed from the underlying data in the database itself, rather than from a different cached balance set. It is even possible to create a complete cached balance set from an incomplete cached balance set if certain criteria are met. By using both complete and incomplete cached balance sets to retrieve values in response to a query, the performance of the resulting system is significantly enhanced.