Patent ID: 7487436

Claim:
A method for managing deletion operations in a recursive scalable template instance (RSTI) of a multi-dimensional electronic data table having a first data table dimension (D 1 ) and a second data table dimension (D 2 ), said RSTI comprising a plurality of contiguous recursive element instances (REIs) ordered and aligned along the dimension D 1 , at least two REIs having a different size along the dimension D 1 , each REI having a same size along the dimension D 2 , each REI comprising at least one scalable template instance (STI), said method implemented by execution of a computer program by a processor of a computer system, said method comprising: deleting, upon satisfaction of a consistency condition, one or more contiguous elements in a first STI of at the least one STI of a first REI of the plurality of REIs of the RSTI, the RSTI structured according to an associated recursive scalable template (RST), said RST comprising a recursive element (RE) including at least one scalable template (ST), each STI of each REI structured according to an associated ST of the at least one ST, each STI of each REI having a first dimension aligned along the dimension D 1 and a second dimension aligned along the dimension D 2 , an element being defined as a range of data that comprises at least one datum, all remaining elements in the first STI being contiguous after said deleting the one or more contiguous elements; and adjusting a size of the first REI along the dimension D 1 according to a size of a largest STI in the first REI, all REIs of the RSTI remaining contiguous after said adjusting the size of the first REI.