Patent ID: 8108365

Claim:
A database management system operable to determine consistency in a hierarchical database, the hierarchical database including a plurality of segment data with each segment data being identified by a retention address and having one or more pointers to other segment data, the database management system comprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing instructions comprising: a data reading section operable to sequentially read the one or more pointers of the plurality of segment data from the hierarchical database; an address hash value generating section operable to generate an address hash value of retention addresses of segment data read by the data reading section; a pointer hash value generating section operable to generate a pointer hash value of pointers included in the segment data read by the data reading section; an address hash value correcting section operable to correct the address hash value when a given segment data already read by the data reading section is deleted or when new segment data is added to the segment data already read by the data reading section; a pointer hash value correcting section operable to correct the pointer hash value when the given segment data already read by the data reading section is deleted or when the new segment data is added to the segment data already read by the data reading section; and a consistency determining section operable to determine that the hierarchical database is consistent if the address hash value corrected by the address hash value correcting section coincides with the pointer hash value corrected by the pointer hash value correcting section.