Maintaining availability of a restartable data base system.

摘要

A method is disclosed for maintaining availability of a restartable data base system where continuity of service is guaranteed by having a loosely-coupled backup processor taking over processing of a degraded active processor. The backup processor continuously tracks the activities of the active processor to ascertain data set elements updatable by the active processor. Upon switchover, images of data set elements updatable by the degraded active processor are created in the buffer of the backup processor. By making references and updates to the images, processing of the backup processor can start immediately after switchover. Upon preventing the degraded active processor from making further updates, the backup processor writes the images back to the data base.