Patent ID: 7739311

Claim:
A method in a computing system for performing statistical computations in a statistical programming language on a data set that is larger than can fit in memory practicably, the data set comprising at least one row and at least one column, comprising: inputting data from the data set into an external data cache area on an external storage medium, the external data cache area separate from virtual memory of the computing system; under control of an interpreter of the statistical programming language, generating an in-memory data structure that contains an indicator to the external data cache area; and under control of an interpreter of the statistical programming language, performing in memory a statistical computation, defined using the statistical programming language, on the inputted data, the data larger than can fit into physical and, when present, virtual memory practicably at once, by accessing and processing the data from the external data cache area a portion at a time through the generated in-memory structure.