A system for creating a snapshot of a subset of a database stored as a plurality of segments in an address space, where the system includes a processor configured to determine from the segments, one or more source segments of the snapshot, and allocate, using a virtual memory creation unit for the snapshot, one or more snapshot segments within the address space, where the one or more snapshot segments are mapped to same physical memory addresses as the one or more source segments, and where the one or more source segments and/or the one or more snapshot segments are set to copy-on-write.