Patent Document ID: 7539666
Application ID: 10819458
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of directing a data processing system to manage geographic identifiers stored in a database, the geographic identifiers each identifying a respective geographic feature displayed on a surface map space partitioned by a mosaic of non-rectilinear shaped cells, the method comprising: accessing a geographic look-up table associating a unique row identifier with each geographical feature; for each row in the geographic look-up table, performing: determining at least one non-rectilinear shaped cell that intersects the geographical feature associated with the row identifier in the row by determining at least one non-rectilinear shaped cell that intersects a bound box of the geographical feature; for each of the determined at least one non-rectilinear shaped cell, generating an entry in an index identifying the row identifier of the geographical feature and the determined non-rectilinear shaped cell intersecting the geographical feature, wherein the index is a non-unique B-tree index, wherein the index associates the row identifiers of the geographical features with cell identifiers of non-rectilinear shaped cells that intersect the bound box including the geographical feature, and wherein an index key of the index comprises the identifier of the non-rectilinear shaped cell and a data value of the index comprises the row identifier of the geographical feature; and wherein the index associates the row identifiers of the geographical features with cell identifiers of non-rectilinear shaped cells that include the geographical feature, wherein there are multiple entries in the index for one row identifier intersecting multiple non-rectilinear shaped cells, wherein the multiple entries indicate the non-rectilinear shaped cells intersecting the geographical feature identified by the row identifier, and wherein the geographic look-up table and the index are stored in the database; receiving a search region; determining the non-rectilinear shaped cells that intersect the search region; searching, by the data processing system, the index to determine the row identifiers associated with the cell identifiers of the determined non-rectilinear shaped cells included in the search region; and producing the determined row identifiers identifying the geographical features included in the search region.