Patent ID: 8046680

Claim:
A method of generating reference structural patterns adapted to represent hierarchized data comprising: extracting primary structural patterns associated with the hierarchized data, each of the primary structural patterns representing a set of pieces of structural information; determining a degree of use of the extracted primary structural patterns on a basis of a number of hierarchized pieces of data able to be represented by the extracted primary structural patterns; grouping the extracted primary structural patterns into groups of primary structural patterns, wherein the grouping comprises grouping primary structural patterns that are close with respect to a distance between the primary structural patterns that is weighted by the degree of use of at least one of the primary structural patterns; determining one reference structural pattern per group of determined primary structural patterns, the reference structural pattern being adapted to represent the primary structural patterns of a group associated with it; determining pieces of information on difference between the reference structural patterns and the associated hierarchized data; and coding the hierarchized data according to the reference structural patterns and the pieces of difference information, wherein the reference structural pattern associated with the group is determined on the basis of at least some of the primary structural patterns of the group and, for each primary structural pattern a measurement of representativeness with resect to the hierarchical data associated with primary structural patterns of the group, the reference structural pattern so determined being referred to as a median reference structural pattern, and wherein the reference structural pattern associated with the group is more particularly determined on the basis of the primary structural patterns having the highest representativeness measurements.