Patent ID: 8266147

Claim:
A method of organizing data in a data processing system, data in the data processing system including a plurality of individual data elements arranged in at least one table having columns and rows, each of the data elements corresponding to a row and column, said method comprising: grouping a plurality of the rows of the at least one table into a row unit, wherein the at least one table comprises a plurality of row units, and wherein a data unit corresponds to the row unit and a column, wherein each data unit comprises a plurality of data elements; gathering information about each data unit and storing the information in a corresponding information unit, and using the information in the information units to minimize the number of data unit access requests during resolving the data queries received by the system; and using a processing arrangement to perform a clustering operation on the rows to create the plurality of row units, each of the row units characterized by information units gathering information about corresponding data units, records to create a plurality of clusters, at least one of said plurality of clusters characterized by a selected metadata parameter, wherein said clustering operation optimizes a calculated value of a selected precision factor for the selected information unit, the selected information unit is selected to minimize the number of data unit access requests during resolving the data queries received by the system, and the selected precision factor is related to efficiency of using the selected information unit to minimize the number of data unit access requests during resolving the data queries received by the system metadata parameter.