A method, system and computer program product for supporting concurrent updates to a shared data element group while preserving group integrity on behalf of one or more readers that are concurrently referencing group data elements without using locks or atomic instructions. Two or more updaters may be invoked to generate new group data elements. Each new data element created by the same up dater is assigned a new generation number that is different than a global generation number associated with the data element group and which allows a reader of the data element group to determine whether the new data element is a correct version for the reader. The new generation numbers are different for each up dater and assigned according to an order in which the updaters respectively begin update operations. The global generation number is updated so that when all of the up daters have completed data element update processing, the global generation number will correspond to the new generation number that is associated with the last of the up daters to begin update operations.
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