Patent ID: 6957230

Claim:
In a distributed computing environment, a computer-implemented method comprising: receiving data from a data store, the data corresponding to a plurality of objects, each object of the objects comprising one or more respective attributes; responsive to receiving the data, dynamically generating multiple hierarchies of inter-object relationships based on values of attributes of the objects, the multiple hierarchies of inter-object relationships being a data polyarchy; and wherein generating the data polyarchy further comprises: identifying a plurality of distinguishing attributes, each distinguishing attribute representing a respective object of the objects that is a root of a hierarchy, each distinguishing attribute being from a substantially unique distribution of similar attributes across the objects; identifying one or more locating attributes for narrowing a search for an object of the objects; each locating attribute being from a relatively large distribution of similar attributes across the objects; and identifying one or more classifying attributes for filtering out objects from a search for an object, each classifying attribute being from a relatively small distribution of similar attributes across the objects.