Patent ID: 8903814

Claim:
A method for processing a query specifying at least a first value and a second value to produce query results, comprising: accessing a database index to determine a location where query result data is stored, comprising: upon determining that the first value specified in the query is a timestamp value, accessing the database index containing a plurality of database index keys to determine the location of query result data using a partial key comparison between the first value and a first one or more of the plurality of database index keys, wherein each of the first one or more database index keys includes at least a respective first timestamp value and a respective first time zone value, comprising: comparing the first value specified in the query with a portion of one of the first one or more database index keys to determine that the first value and the portion of the database index key are equivalent, wherein the compared portion of the first database index key excludes the first time zone value; and accessing location information data within the first database index key to determine the location of the query result data; upon determining that the second value specified in the query is not a timestamp value, accessing the database index to determine the location of the query result data using a full key comparison between the second value and a second one or more of the plurality of database index keys that are not timestamp values, such that the second value specified in the query is compared with the entirety of at least one of the second one or more database index keys; and retrieving the query result data using the determined location.