Patent ID: 8495034
Filing Date: 2013-07-23
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for accessing data in a computer system, comprising: accessing data stored in a table in a database managed by a database management system executed by the computer system; wherein compression and decompression functions are associated with a column of the table, in order to perform compression of the data stored in the column when the data is inserted or updated in the table, and in order to perform decompression of the data stored in the column when the data is retrieved from the table; wherein the compression function stores the data in a fixed-length compressed field in the column without a length value, and the fixed-length compressed field has a size that is determined by a range of values for the data stored in the fixed-length compressed field; and wherein the decompression function retrieves and decompresses the data from the fixed-length compressed field.