Patent ID: 7840561

Claim:
A computer readable storage medium having a set of instructions which when executed perform a method for providing hierarchical data, the method executed by the set of instructions comprising: receiving data corresponding to an item, wherein receiving the data corresponding to the item comprises receiving the data corresponding to a website; creating a cache corresponding to an ancestry of the item, wherein creating the cache corresponding to the ancestry of the first item comprises: including information in the cache configured to define a hierarchy of the item, creating the cache corresponding to the ancestry of a child web site corresponding to the first item, the information in the cache corresponding to a plurality of parent web sites higher in the hierarchy and being related to the child web site, and separating the information in the cache corresponding to the plurality of parent web sites by a unique separator, the unique separator comprising a semicolon; storing the received data corresponding to the item in a database having a plurality of rows corresponding to cached items and a plurality of columns corresponding to the information for each of the cached items; and storing the cache in the database as a property of the item.