Patent ID: 8489553

Claim:
A method for managing data, a method including: receiving at least one group of individually accessible data units over an input device or port, each data unit identified by a key value, with key values of received data units being determined such that the key value identifying a given first data unit that is received before a given second data unit occurs earlier in a sort order than the key value identifying the given second data unit; and processing, by at least one processor, the received data units for storage in a data storage system, the processing including storing a plurality of blocks of data, one or more of the blocks being generated by combining a plurality of the received data units; providing an index that includes an entry for each of the blocks, wherein one or more of the entries enable location, based on a provided key value, of a block that includes a data unit corresponding to the provided key value; and generating one or more screening data structures associated with the stored blocks for determining, based on a given key value and one or more of the screening data structures, whether to search the stored blocks for a data unit that corresponds to the given key value.