Patent ID: 8126855

Claim:
A computer program product, stored in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, the computer program product being operable to cause data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising: generating a bit vector for each of a plurality of columns of dictionary-based compression values, the plurality of columns of dictionary-based compression values being based on a dictionary of possible values for each column of a column-based database comprising structured business data, each of the bit vectors representing most-frequently occurring values of a respective column, the generating comprising having each bit of each bit vector represent whether the most-frequently occurring value of the respective column exists in a respective row of the respective column, each column of the plurality of columns having been sorted such that the most-frequently occurring value of each column is at one end of that column; associating, with the bit vector for each of the plurality of columns, a number representing an amount of occurrences of the most-frequently occurring value for the respective column; removing, from each of the bit vectors, a representation of the most-frequently occurring value based on the number associated with the bit vector for the respective column; storing the numbers for each of the bit vectors to enable nonvolatile memory searches of the data represented by each of the numbers and the bit vectors, the searches comprising searching at least one of a delta buffer and the dictionary-based compression values, the delta buffer storing, separately from the plurality of columns, one or more changes to the dictionary-based compression values of the plurality of columns, the one or more changes being asynchronously integrated.