US Patent 10437673 Internet based shared memory in a distributed computing system

A method includes sending, by a computing device of a distributed storage and task (DST) network, a plurality of sets of encoded data slices and index generation task information to a set of DST execution units. The method further includes receiving partial data indexes from the set of DST execution units. The method further includes generating a data index based on the partial data indexes and determining an operational task from a list of operational tasks that includes storing the plurality of sets of encoded data slices, storing the data index, long term storage of the raw data, execute a data processing function on the sets of encoded data slices and execute a data processing function on the data index. The method further includes partitioning the operational task into a set of partial tasks and sending the set of partial tasks to the set of DST execution units.