Patent ID: 7222159

Claim:
A method for managing a plurality of messages, wherein each of the plurality of messages comprises a plurality of properties, and each property corresponds to a defined portion of a character string that comprises the message, the method comprising: identifying a message identifier for each of the plurality of messages; for any given message in the plurality of messages: identifying an instance of a property contained in the message; for each identified instance: determining whether the identified instance of the property in that message is stored in a first data structure, and if the identified instance of the property is new so as to not exist in the first data structure, the method further comprises, storing the identified instance in the first data structure, and associating the identified instance with a message identifier for that message; else if the identified instance already exists in the first data structure, the method further comprises, associating the message identifier for that message with the identified instance that exists in the first data structure.