Patent ID: 7676518

Claim:
A method of processing data comprising: grouping, using one or more processors, a set of business objects containing the data into a smaller set of bubbles, each bubble in the smaller set of bubbles comprising a container that provides only statistical information about the business objects therein, the grouping comprising randomly selecting a representative business object for each bubble, computing a global similarity between pairs of representative business objects among the smaller set of bubbles, and assigning each other business object in the set of business objects to the most similar bubble based on a comparison of a local similarity between each object and all bubbles and the global similarity, the local similarity comprising a local similarity measure and a weight for each attribute in a set of one or more attributes, the global similarity comprising a weighted sum of a local similarity for each attribute in the set of one or more attributes; clustering, using the one or more processors, the bubbles in the smaller set of bubbles based on a nearest neighbor similarity, the clustering comprising determining for a first bubble in the set of bubbles whether a threshold comprising a k-similarity can be set for the first bubble such that k other bubbles in the smaller set of bubbles have values of the global similarity between their respective representative business objects and the representative business object of the first bubble that exceeds the k-similarity; if the threshold can be set for the first bubble, designating the first bubble as a core bubble, adding the k other bubbles to a control list in ranked order by their values of the global similarity, and setting the value of the global similarity for each of the k other bubbles to the k-similarity; if the threshold can not be set for the first bubble, omitting the first bubble from the control list and determining for a second bubble in the smaller set of bubbles whether a threshold comprising a k-similarity can be set for the second bubble such that k other bubbles in the set of bubbles have values of the global similarity between their respective representative business objects and the representative business object of the second bubble that exceeds the k-similarity; and generating a visualization of the bubbles on the control list.