Patent ID: 8005834

Claim:
An article of manufacture comprising computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing a relationship to be implemented within a database using BitSets, said program code being stored in computer readable memory or storage device, the computer readable program means in said article of manufacture comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect: A) defining a database scheme; B.) quantify a relationship among a plurality of entities; C.) populate said database with instances of independent relationships among said entities and concurrently populating said database with Bitsets, inserts, deletes and/or changes, there being constraints on the number of keys in the BitSet to allow database integrity thus disallowing incorrect relationship data from being entered into said database, there being associations stored in the form of said Bitsets free from dependency on attribute data values; D.) submitting an explicit query for desired information so that said database performs evaluation of said query using said Bitsets, said Bitsets being of variable length and prepopulated based upon associations, said query processing being independent of data values, said query for desired information being queries for categorization involving retrieving entities associated with all levels, with a single query using column functions for relationships and Boolean Rule evaluation using a method selected from the group consisting of iteration of recursive queries, confirmation of existence of or count of entities in the relationship; E.) database generates a resultant set; F.) resultant set returned to a requestor; G.) repeat steps as D through F until a recursive association under consideration for said resultant set is exhausted, said steps for causing a relationship to be implemented within said database using BitSets being free of indexing.