Patent ID: 7222125

Claim:
A data structure management apparatus that structurally retains and manages plural pieces of data structure that are stored in one or a plurality of storage units and carries out operations of data retrieval, addition, update, and deletion so that each of the operation with respect to the plural pieces of data structure results in consistent results, comprising: a data structure storage unit configured to store an arbitrary first data structure; a data structure modification unit configured to modify said first data structure; a standard configuration storage unit configured to store a standard configuration in which all nodes contained in said first data structure are arranged in a descending or ascending order, and every node contains a pointer for only one of either a right or left child node, or contains no pointers for a child node; a data extraction unit configured to extract, as modification data in said first data structure, only a portion of pointer information container in a node of which a sorting sequence is changed in said standard configuration by the same modification operation performed with respect to said standard configuration as that performed by the data structure modification unit; and a modified data transmission unit configured to output the extracted modification data necessary for keeping a second data structure equivalent so as to reflect the modification data in said second data structure, wherein said first data structure and said second data structure contain all of the same data, have the same sorting sequence, but the first data structure has a different pointer structure from that of said second data structure.