21. The computer readable medium of claim 20, said sequences of instructions further including instructions for performing the steps of: acquiring a second lock on said body of metadata associated with said one or more partitions; updating said body of metadata; and releasing said second lock on said body of metadata.
21. The computer readable medium of claim 20, said sequences of instructions further including instructions for performing the steps of: acquiring a second lock on said body of metadata associated with said one or more partitions; updating said body of metadata; and releasing said second lock on said body of metadata. 22. The computer readable medium of claim 21, wherein: said step of acquiring said second lock on said body of metadata comprises the step of acquiring an exclusive data dictionary lock on a subset of said body of metadata; and said step of releasing said second lock on said body of metadata comprises the step of releasing said exclusive data dictionary lock on said subset of said body of metadata.