The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 07, 1998
Filed:
Jun. 11, 1996
Philip L Boyer, San Jose, CA (US);
Michael James Carey, San Jose, CA (US);
Gerald G Kiernan, San Jose, CA (US);
International Business Machines Corp., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A method of, and system for, interactively accessing information in response to a user command having a predefined operator and specifying one of a plurality of collections of information. The collections of information are stored in an object-oriented database in a hierarchical arrangement of data members. The hierarchical arrangement can include one level of data members and in which one of the data members is composed of a next level of data members. Each data member is stored according to one of a system-specified and a user-specified storage definition. A set of user-specified storage definitions is defined from the plurality of storage definitions. Upon detecting the user command, the specified collection of information is analyzed to determine which data members of the one level are stored according to one of the storage definitions of the set. Each data member not in the set is added to a projection list; each data member in the set is expanded into a next level of data members composing the data member in the set. Expanding can include analyzing each data member of the next level to determine whether it is in the set and if so again expanding up until a specified level of expanding. The projection list is processed to return to the user the information corresponding to the data members in the projection list. The invention may be implemented in a Parser layer of a known layered architecture for database systems.