Patent ID: 8874562

Claim:
A method of constructing a transaction database for a transaction processing application, the method comprising the steps of: for each of a plurality of separate, complete transactions, (a) receiving input for that transaction from a corresponding user via the transaction processing application; (b) responsive to receiving input from the corresponding user for that transaction, constructing a corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record for that transaction that embodies all of the input received for that transaction; and (c) appending a time address to the corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record for that transaction, with the time address indicating when the corresponding transaction was completed and concatenatedly storing the corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record for that transaction in a non-volatile data storage, with concatenatedly storing the corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record at least involving appending to the corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record a time address that identifies when the corresponding record was stored, with the time address for the corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record being permanently associated with each concatenatedly stored corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record, and with the transaction processing application during normal operation preventing any overwriting of the concatenatedly stored corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record with any other data that is entered for any of the plurality of transactions that are processed subsequent to completing that transaction, wherein for each of a plurality of transactions, there is at least a key structure including a primary key with the corresponding hierarchically-structured transaction record concatenated with an alternative key.