Patent ID: 7860835

Claim:
An article comprising a tangibly-embodied machine-readable storage medium operable to cause one or more machines to result in operations comprising: generating a short identifier for each of a plurality of data objects, each short identifier comprising a first portion generated based on hierarchy information and characterizing a sort order which depends on the time assigning identifier and a second portion characterizing a composite component identifier associated with the corresponding data object, the sort order characterizing a relationship among at least a subset of the plurality of data objects, the short identifier being globally unique and consisting of a unitary alphanumeric string, the first portion being separate from and different than the second portion; and storing the generated short identifiers in a database to enable queries of the database containing a short identifier to return data contained within the corresponding data objects; wherein the first portion comprises a first hash of at least a portion of sort criteria; wherein the second portion comprises a second hash of at least a portion of the composite component identifier; wherein the composite component identifiers are globally unique identifiers that combine randomly generated numbers, computer network specific information, and time information.