Patent ID: 6721723
Filing Date: 2004-04-13
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
A memory for storing data for access by an application program being executed on a digital computation system, said data being composed of at least one data item, said data item being composed of at least one data segment, said data segment being composed of at least one data unit including a first data unit, said memory including a data structure stored in said memory, said data structure including information resident in a database used by said application program, said data structure comprising:(a) a linear stream of nodes stored in consecutive memory locations in said memory, each of said nodes containing a data segment, said nodes including predecessor nodes and successor nodes and being related by location in said stream wherein each of said predecessor nodes is stored in a memory location before said node that it precedes within said stream and each of said successor nodes is stored in a memory location after said node that it succeeds within said stream; (b) progressions of said nodes in said stream from a root alternate list member node to a leaf node corresponding to progressions of data segments of said data items; (c) said progressions being traversed by advancing only once through said consecutive memory locations from said root alternate list member node using node information included in each of said nodes, said node information including a size value indicating the number of said data units in said node, a leaf node flag indicating if said node is a leaf node, and a terminal alternate flag indicating if said node is an alternate list terminal node; (d) each of said progressions being associated with at least one identifier that is adapted to reference at least one object external to said stream; (e) selected data segments of different data items in selected progressions of successor nodes being different for different data items; and (f) selected data segments of different data items in selected predecessor nodes being common to said different data items.