Patent ID: 7844633

Claim:
A structured document storage and management system, comprising: a data store having one or more computer useable storage media; a generic document model tree in said data store representing a structured document model, said generic document model tree containing one or more structured document nodes without storing node data that is unique to any particular structured document; a symbol conversion module in said data store containing untagged data associated with said one or more structured document nodes, said untagged data representing node data for one or more particular structured documents conforming to said structured document model, said symbol conversion module also maintaining a value code in association with each element of said node data; and an encoded vector set in said data store comprising a set of encoded vectors, each encoded vector being assigned to one of said structured document nodes of said generic document model tree, each encoded vector being comprised of a set of vector elements that each store a copy of one of said symbol conversion module value codes for said structured document node to which said encoded vector is assigned, each value code being stored at an index position in said encoded vector that corresponds to a particular structured document that conforms to said generic document model tree; whereby said encoded vector set represents encoded document storage for a set of structured documents that conform to said generic document model tree, with said node data for each node of a structured document being determinable by consulting each of said encoded vectors at an index position corresponding to said structured document and using said value code stored at said index position to consult said symbol conversion module and identify said node data that is associated with said value code.