Patent ID: 7254582

Claim:
A method for creating a searchable representation of an electronic catalog having a plurality of product records, comprising: storing a representation of an attribute of a first product from the electronic catalog into a first data field of a first record of a search data structure, incrementing a second data field of the first record of the search data structure by one to thereby represent that one product record within the electronic catalog has the attribute, and adding an additional data field to the first record of the search data structure which has a representation of a product record address at which data pertaining to the first product is stored within the electronic catalog; and comparing an attribute of a second product from the electronic catalog to the attribute stored in the first data field of the first record and, if the attributes match, performing the further steps of: incrementing the second data field in the first record by one so as to represent a new total number of product records within the electronic catalog that have the attribute and adding an additional data field to the first record of the search data structure which has a representation of a product record address at which data pertaining to the second product is stored within the electronic catalog; and if the attributes do not match, performing the further steps of: storing a representation of the attribute of the second product into a first data field of a second record of the search data structure, incrementing a second data field of the second record of the search data structure by one to thereby represent that one product record within the electronic catalog has the attribute, and adding an additional data field to the second record of the search data structure which has a representation of a product record address at which data pertaining to the second product is stored within the electronic catalog.