Patent ID: 8312026

Claim:
A method for preparing a relational database R for compression by a compressor C, the method comprising: by a processor, computing an optimum relational dependency transform D comprising a set of field dependency relations (p,f) wherein p is a predictor field of R and f is a predictee field of R, the computing comprising computing an optimum branching of a graph G(E) having a node set that is a set of possible predictor fields p and predictee fields f of R, and having an edge set that comprises possible dependency relations (p,f), each edge having a weight based on C(δ p (f)) wherein a field f is transformed by a transform δ p based on a defined permutation of the field p, and is compressed by the compressor C; by a processor, sorting the fields of R topologically based on a graph G(D), the graph G(D) having a node set that is a set of all predictor fields p and predictee fields f of D, and having an edge set that comprises every dependency relation (p,f) of D; by a processor, for each field f in a resulting topologically sorted database R, computing δ p (f) via the relation (p,f) εD.