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:
May. 23, 2000
Filed:
Feb. 28, 1997
Cetin Ozbutun, San Carlos, CA (US);
Jeffrey I Cohen, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Hakan Jakobsson, San Francisco, CA (US);
Mark Kremer, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Michael Depledge, San Jose, CA (US);
Quoc Tai Tran, Redwood Shores, CA (US);
Alexander C Ho, Belmont, CA (US);
Julian Hyde, San Francisco, CA (US);
Oracle Corporation, Redwood Shores, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for segmenting bitmaps in a bitmap index is provided. A segmented bitmap includes a plurality of bitmap segments that are used to indicate which records in a body of records that is associated with the segmented bitmap satisfy a particular criteria. Each bitmap segment contains a string of bits that correspond to a corresponding range of records in the body of records. There may be gaps between the ranges represented by the bitmap segments when, for example, the body of records does not contain records in a particular range. For the purposes of retrieval, compression, de-compression, locking and logging, the database system treats each bitmap segment as a distinct data item.