US Patent 7769718 Unobtrusive point-in-time consistent copies

Techniques to create physically and transactionally consistent copies of one or more database objects without impacting the availability of the target database objects are described. In one technique, a consistent copy is created as of the time a copy utility is executed. In another technique, a consistent copy is created as of an arbitrary specified time. This approach modifies a prior copy to bring it “up-to-date.” In yet another technique, a consistent copy is created by starting with a current snapshot of the target database objects and selectively removing updates from it back to a user specified arbitrary point-in-time. Each of the described techniques generate consistent copies of the target database objects without blocking users from accessing the target objects during the copy operation.