US Patent 11500700 Leasing prioritized items in namespace indices

A method, system, and computer program product for implementing indexes in a dispersed storage network (dsNet) are provided. The method accesses a work queue containing a set of work items as a set of key-value pairs. The key-value pairs are tuples including a work identifier and a work lease timestamp. The method selects a first work identifier and a first lease timestamp for a new work. The set of work items and the new work item are ordered according to a priority scheme to generate a modified work queue. Based on the modified work queue, the method transmits a work request to a plurality of data source units. The work request including a hash parameter and a bit parameter. The hash parameter is associated with a key-value pair of the modified work queue. The bit parameter indicates a number of bits of the hash parameter to consider.