A method, apparatus, and program product are provided for preserving a query plan cache on a backup system having a dataspace containing a copy of data and a copy of a query plan cache from a production system. An update is initiated of at least a portion of the copy of the data on the backup system with a portion of the data on the production system. A merge is initiated of updated query plans in the query plan cache from the production system with corresponding query plans in the copy of the query plan cache on the backup system. Objects are correlated in the updated query plans in the copy of the query plan cache with the updated copy of the data on the backup system.