Patent ID: 8914323

Claim:
A method operative in association with a sorted, distributed key-value data store, comprising: as data is ingested into the data store at an ingest time, tagging one or more key-value pairs in the data with a data-centric label as determined by an ingest-time policy to generate tagged data, the data-centric label representing a function adapted to be evaluated over a set of variables; storing the tagged data in the data store; at query time, the query time being distinct from the ingest time, and in response to receipt of a query from a querier, performing the following sub-steps: processing the query according to a query-time policy to identify a set of one or more data-centric attributes the query is allowed to use, wherein the processing evaluates values of one or more user-centric attributes associated with the querier against at least one policy rule in the query-time policy to identify the set of one or more data-centric attributes; modifying the query to include the set of one or more data-centric attributes so identified, the one or more data-centric attributes being distinct from the data-centric label; forwarding to the data store the query that has been modified to include the set of one more identified data-centric attributes; receiving a response to the query that has been modified to include the set of one more identified data-centric attributes, wherein the response is generated in the data store upon evaluating the set of one or more data-centric attributes in the query with at least one data-centric label in the data store, the data-centric label in the data store having been associated with the data during the tagging at ingest time; and returning the response to the querier; wherein at least one of the steps is carried out in software executing in a hardware processor.