US Patent 8244735 Efficient and scalable data evolution with column oriented databases

A method, system and program product for data evolution on column oriented databases is disclosed. For an input evolution operation, reusable and non-reusable attributes are identified. For attributes in a target schema that cannot be reused from the source schema, data and bitmap indexes of those attributes are generated from source data and bitmap indexes. A decompose operation is disclosed for decomposing a table into two tables. A merge operation is disclosed in which only one input table can be reused for mergence. A second merge operation is disclosed in which both input tables cannot be reused for mergence.