Patent ID: 8606818

Claim:
A method for optimizing the storage of a one-to-many reference to a hierarchical data structure comprising: receiving of a one-to-many reference to a contiguous region of a hierarchical data structure by a memory management component of a data handling computing system, where said one-to-many reference originates from a data construct external to the hierarchical data structure, and, wherein said hierarchical structure comprises a plurality of uniquely-identifiable parent-child relationships between nodes; loading each uniquely-identifiable parent-child relationship of the hierarchical data structure as a data structure reference into a volatile memory element of the data handling computing system, wherein said data structure reference conforms to a predefined reference format; determining an ancestor node of the contiguous region within the hierarchical data structure referenced by the one-to-many reference, wherein said ancestor node is common to all other nodes of the contiguous region; creating an external reference to represent the one-to-many reference, wherein said external reference is a parent-child relationship between a source of the one-to-many reference and the ancestor node of the hierarchical data structure, wherein the external reference conforms to the predefined reference format; and storing the external reference within the volatile memory element.