Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.P.

Scott Alan Stanley

Mark Henry Butler

David Murray Banks

Ruel Calalo

A directed graph of data includes nodes, propertiesattached to nodes and resources. The nodes, propertiesand resourcesare classified as indexable or non indexable. At least one propertylinks a pair of nodes, one node being a parent and one being a child. An indexing algorithm indexes each indexable property pointing to a resource as related to any respective indexable nodes linked to the node to which the indexable property is attached through a chain of indexable links from child to parent through intermediate nodes, all of which are non-indexable.

Indexing for data having indexable and non-indexable parent nodes

A hierarchical digital signature method is provided by which different levels of data elements of a data entry are processed in turn to derive function values (for example hash function values) for data elements in the level which are to form part of the digital signature. All function values for one level are combined in a further function to provide an additional function value, and the additional function value is used in the processing of data elements in the next level nearer to the root. This provides a digital signature which can use only selected data elements of a data entry, and which is not sensitive to the ordering of the data entry structure.

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Hayward, CA, United States of America

Scott Alan Stanley