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:
Mar. 23, 2010
Filed:
Aug. 26, 2005
Yao-ching Stephen Chen, Saratoga, CA (US);
Michael Frederic Cowlishaw, Coventry, GB;
Christopher J. Crone, San Jose, CA (US);
Fung Lee, Daly City, CA (US);
Ronald Morton Smith, Sr., Wappingers Falls, NY (US);
Guogen Zhang, San Jose, CA (US);
Qinghua Zou, Issaquah, WA (US);
Yao-Ching Stephen Chen, Saratoga, CA (US);
Michael Frederic Cowlishaw, Coventry, GB;
Christopher J. Crone, San Jose, CA (US);
Fung Lee, Daly City, CA (US);
Ronald Morton Smith, Sr., Wappingers Falls, NY (US);
Guogen Zhang, San Jose, CA (US);
Qinghua Zou, Issaquah, WA (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method for conversion between a decimal floating-point number and an order-preserving format has been disclosed. The method encodes numbers in the decimal floating-point format into a format which preserves value ordering. This encoding allows for fast and direct string comparison of two values. Such an encoding provides normalized representations for decimal floating-point numbers and supports type-insensitive comparisons. Type-insensitive comparisons are often used in database management systems, where the data type is not specified for values to compare. In addition, the original decimal floating-point format can be recovered from the order-preserving format.