Data Refreshing is the process of updating active data replicates based on a regular, known schedule. The frequency and timing of data refreshing must be established to match business needs and must be known by clients.

Today, companies operate in an information-centric and fast-paced world. As such, data and information is very plentiful and readily available. An increasingly high number of people demand for the most current data especially where the data is sensitive or changes very quickly. This is very much applicable in situations where companies or individual use data in order to control or to some degree affect the nature and very behavior of some objects such as a piece of equipment located at a remote location.

With such given circumstance, it a common necessity to have to refresh data being used by a data-using entity. These data-using entities include things such as a data display, a database, a dynamically generated web page, or the like at an interval that is appropriate for the data. Setting the interval for data refreshing should be done carefully: a very short interval will typically result in inefficient allocation of network bandwidth and processor resources. On the other hand, setting the data refreshing interval too long might result in stale data.

Some applications have data which are based on a central data warehouse. For example, many web applications today such as the weather news and financial and stock market heavily depend on the periodical refreshes of their web documents so that the end user can be offered with the last complete information.

Too often, sometimes, the interval between data refreshing is very small and this results in heavy burden on the server as well as on the network resources especially if the data includes multimedia files. Sometimes also, the updated web documents could encounter inordinate delays making it difficult to retrieve web documents in time. In some implementations of data refreshing for web applications and those involving browsers and websites, there are small scripts embedded within an internet browser. These scripts would then allow a user to find out if the refreshing of a multimedia web document will be received in time.

In another implementation method usually employed in enterprise data warehouses, data refreshing is done for adaptively refreshing a data using system. This data refreshing system involves a data source and a data using device for utilizing data from the data source. Initial refresh interval is set on the data using the device and a stable communication link is established between the data source and the data using device.

The system is installed with a criteria monitoring tool for monitoring at least one criterion which is related to the refresh interval. For generating an updated data refresh interval based at least in part on the monitored criteria, a special processor is provided. Data refreshing with the system is based on the data refresh interval.

It is often a common practice in data warehouse to distribute the data in several other data source servers in order to optimize computing. A data site could maintain many computers working as a system to manage one or more data warehouses.

Since the load is distributed but the whole data warehouse system need to be synchronized in order to get information which reflects the real picture of the company, the servers need to constantly communicate with each over the network and give regular updates. Part of this communication tackles with data refreshing. Data refreshing should be done in order to synchronize data and make sure that the final output will always be correct, consistent and very timely.