One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a storage device, a processing module, and a database module. The storage device can maintain a database storing configuration information for the switch. During operation, the processing module produces a piece of data associated with operations of the switch based on the configuration information. The database module then stores the piece of data in a database table of the database without caching the piece of data in a memory of the switch after the piece of data is stored in the database. In this way, the database module can reduce the memory occupancy of the processing module in comparison with the storage occupancy of a schema corresponding to the database table. Subsequently, the processing module can program a hardware module of the switch with the piece of data prior to receiving an acknowledgment from the database module.