An architecture for making data available ceaselessly during recovery

Existing recovery schemes, developed for defensive information warfare scenario, range from completely prohibiting access to affected databases to prohibiting access specifically to damaged data items. In many cases this prohibition is undesirable. We have introduced a recovery model that can substantially reduce the database down-time during the recovery process, while attempting to provide repaired data as accurately as possible. The mechanism itself is divided into two activities. The first activity is the process of gathering summary information about all the database attributes, which is an on going process throughout the lifetime of the database. The second activity which occurs during and after an attack is recognized, providing acceptable values for damaged data items instantaneously, effectively keeping the database available at all times.