Patent ID: 8849834

Claim:
A method implemented and programmed within a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and processed by a processor, the processor configured to execute the method, comprising: determining, via the processor, a beginning and an ending data point in time for column data associated with a column of data stored in a database, including non-scalar data recognizable as temporal data also stored in the database; converting, via the processor, the beginning data point into a first x-value for an x-axis and the ending data point into a second x-value for the x-axis; producing, via the processor, a line segment for the first x-value and the second x-value at a particular height for a y-axis; generating, via the processor, a minimum bounding rectangle (MBR) from the line segment, the MBR having a fixed height assigned to a y-value for the y-axis; and inserting, via the processor, the MBR into an R-tree spatial index.