Patent ID: 8700579

Claim:
A method for applying lossless data compression in a relational database system, the method using a filter cascade having at least one compression filter stage in the filter cascade, the method comprising: providing data input to a compression filter stage of the filter cascade; dynamically evaluating a plurality of data filters available for use in the compression filter stage to be applied to the data input to determine at least one of whether to apply at least one data filter of the plurality of data filters and whether to reuse the at least one data filter; determining a proposed data filter to be applied to the data input, from the plurality of data filters that were dynamically evaluated, that provides an acceptable compression result based on dynamically evaluating the proposed data filter; applying the proposed data filter from the plurality of data filters to the data input to produce reconstruction information and filtered data; compressing the reconstruction information to be included in a filter stream; and providing the filtered data as a compression filter stage output of the compression filter stage.