Patent ID: 7085911

Claim:
A system for providing a hash table for a collection of data items, the system comprising: means for providing a set of hash buckets in the hash table, each hash bucket being associated with a subset of the collection of data items, and wherein said hash table includes a set of bucket groups, each bucket group including a latch for the bucket group, a set of inline hash buckets, and a group header comprising a pointer definable to point to an array of overflow hash buckets; means for providing a set of properties entries in each of the hash buckets, wherein each properties entry includes a pointer to an associated data item in the subset associated with the hash bucket, and a set of representative values for the associated data item, wherein the set of representative values identifies the data item; and means for carrying out a resizing of the hash table, including: means for obtaining the latch for a selected bucket group in exclusive mode; means for allocating a memory location for an array of overflow buckets; means for updating the overflow pointer in the group header for the selected bucket group to point to the memory location; and means for redistributing buckets in the inline hash buckets and the array of overflow buckets.