Patent ID: 7047260

Claim:
A computer-implemented method to determine a tree summary operation, comprising: determining a ratio of a total number of summaries to update within a tree over a total number of nodes within the tree; determining a percentage of updated nodes within the tree versus the total number of nodes in an examination period; determining a processing speed ratio for a first tree summary operation over a second tree summary operation; selecting one of the first tree summary operation, the second tree summary operation, and a third tree summary operation by using the ratio, the percentage, and the processing speed ratio; and wherein in selecting, the first tree summary operation is an operation that recalculates a tree summary by evaluating nodes of the tree to acquire the tree summary and wherein the second tree summary operation calculates the tree summary by storing node summaries for each of the nodes and when one of the node summaries changes updates any affected node summary to recalculate the tree summary, and wherein the third tree summary operation stores tree level summaries at tree levels within the tree and when one of the tree level summaries changes recalculates the tree summary by updating a number of the tree level summaries that occur above the tree level summary that was changed.