US Patent 9946606 Stream architecture for data representation

A stream architecture for data representation is disclosed. A stream is retained with respect to write transactions to a given volume. The stream includes the write transactions and provides a sequence of the write transactions according to the order in which the write transactions were received for the given volume. By way of example, a stream image can be associated to the stream. The stream image provides a representation of the data in the given volume for a point in time by referencing a non-contiguous subset of the sequence of write transactions in the stream.