Patent ID: 8200668

Claim:
A computer-implemented system comprising at least one processor coupled to at least one computer-readable storage medium storing instructions executable by the at least one processor to implement: a grouping component configured to, in response to a definition in a Structured Query Language (SQL) definition language, group a plurality of columns associated with a table in a database into a column set configured as an updatable eXtended Markup Language (XML) column that aggregates a set of relational columns into a single XML representation, the plurality of columns each being columns of a first table, the updatable XML column being co-located, the grouping component being further configured to, when a first column of the plurality of columns includes a first non-null value in a first row and a second column of the plurality of columns includes a second non-null value in the first row, include a combination of the first non-null value and the second non-null value as an entry in a corresponding first row of the updatable XML column, the grouping component being further configured to, when the first column of the plurality of columns includes the first non-null value in the first row and the second column of the plurality of columns includes a null value in the first row, include the first non-null value as the entry in the corresponding first row of the updatable XML column, and the grouping component being further configured to, when the first column of the plurality of columns includes the null value in the first row and the second column of the plurality of columns includes the second non-null value in the first row, include the second non-null value as the entry in the corresponding first row of the updatable XML column; the grouping component including an aggregation component configured to create a scalar representation of the plurality of columns at least partly in terms of the column set, and a shredding component configured to break the scalar representation into individual columns.