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:
Dec. 31, 2002
Filed:
Nov. 17, 1999
Lance Christopher Amundsen, Rochester, MN (US);
Robert Joseph Bestgen, Dodge Center, MN (US);
Richard Dale Hoffman, Austin, TX (US);
Daniel Virgil Toft, Rochester, MN (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Query results and statistics regarding them are generated using a novel representation of an n-attribute relation as an order n relational tensor. Orders of the relational tensor respectively correspond to each of the attributes, and each coordinate along an order relates to a key value of the corresponding attribute. Numeric values are stored in the relational tensor, each numeric value representing a count of tuples having the attribute key values that correspond to the coordinate of the numeric value along the orders of the relational tensor. This storage representation is useful in a variety of contexts for enhancing the performance of a RDBMS system. Specifically, in a first aspect of the invention, a tensor representation can be used to generate statistics for a user query so that the relational database system can determine, from among two candidate approaches, an approach to use in processing the user query based on the statistic. Also, a a data-representing relational tensor can be used to produce results for a restrict operation such as the SQL operations DISTINCT, PROJECTION, EQUALS, LESS THAN, LESS THAN OR EQUAL, GREATER THAN, GREATER THAN OR EQUAL and LIKE.