Patent Document ID: 7475058
Application ID: 10017689

Base Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method performed by a computing device for querying a data structure in a distributed computing environment, comprising: preparing a query specifying the constraints to be applied on at least two different data structures wherein each data structure comprises substantially the same information wherein the information is stored in a different data format type and where each data structure is queried according to a different format type wherein the data structure is stored as one of XML, database tables, and a programming language data structure; sending the query to at least two different objects wherein each object maintains one of the at least two different data structures in-memory and determines whether the in-memory data structure maintained by each object satisfies the query; and receiving the results from the query from the at least two different objects wherein the query results are returned in substantially identical formats.

---

Claim 2:
2. The method as recited in claim 1 wherein the query is specified as a text string.