Patent ID: 7178100

Claim:
Apparatus for storing and processing a plurality of data items each comprising supplied data values organized in one or more fields, at least some of said fields containing variable length data values, and at least a given one of said supplied data values comprising a sequence of character values, at least some of which represent natural language text consisting of a sequence of natural language words, said apparatus comprising, in combination, a random access memory for storing an array of fixed-length binary integers, a first data converter for transforming each of said data values in each of said fields into a sequence of zero or more fixed-length integers and for storing each such sequence in said random access memory, said first data converter including means for convening each given one of said natural language words into one of said integers having a value which uniquely specifies said given natural language word, means for storing the number of integers in the sequence of integers representing the contents of each field containing said variable length data values, means responsive to the designation of a particular one of said natural language words for accessing a selected sequence of integers representing said given one of said supplied data values in a particular one of said fields by performing a search for the integer value representing said particular one of said words in said array, and a second data converter for transforming said selected sequence of integers into said sequence of character values representing said supplied data values in said particular one of said fields, said second data converter including means for transforming a sequence of integers representing a corresponding sequence of natural language words into the corresponding sequence of character values representing said natural language text.