Patent ID: 7797296
Filing Date: 2010-09-14
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A method of accessing a multi-dimensional index structure resident in main memory for facilitating reference to data objects stored in a database, wherein the multi-dimensional index structure consists of internal nodes having pointers to child nodes and leaf nodes having pointers to database objects, the method comprising: associating at least one node with one or more minimum bounding rectangles (“MBRs”), wherein each MBR is a minimal hyper-rectangle enclosing a corresponding data object in a case of a leaf node and all hyper-rectangles in the child node in a case of an internal node; representing each of the one or more MBRs by a relative MBR (“RMBR”), wherein the RMBR consists of coordinates of a corresponding one of the one or more MBRs represented relative to coordinates of a reference MBR; and accessing the data objects stored in the database as a function of the RMBR.