Update of a tree-based database

Abstract

Data items are represented by trees and stored in a database, the collection of data items defining a forest. Queries and masks are also represented by trees. A method for navigating the forest of data items is disclosed in the context of a graphical user interface. A set of operations on trees are defined such that the data items can be queried on the basis of structure as well as node values. That is, the query can include a specification of the relationship between nodes in a tree, as well as the data in the nodes themselves. Exemplary implementations of such operations are disclosed in the context of a database update procedure. Additionally disclosed are methods for efficiently storing and processing the forest of data items.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION This invention relates to the field of databases, and, more specifically, to a system that uses tree data structures to represent, exchange, query, store, update, and navigate data. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION This invention is often discussed herein in the context of financial risk management, but this invention is much broader in its application because the tree-based database according to this invention may be used for literally any type of heterogeneous data. Financial risk-management systems rely on complex object models for the storage, query and update of data. Each point of the data is derived from a diverse set of inputs that depend on market data, trade details and configured parameters. The number and type of these inputs differs widely among different categories of risk exposure; however, the risk manager needs to see the data as a single, unified search space for reporting and analysis. The same applies for any other type of complex system tha...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

As a means to transfer data, XML has many advantages. For example, many APIs to other applications exist and it is flexible and extensible. However, XML does not offer any storage, update or query mechanism and the XML representation of objects is too verbose to be an option for storing data.

These problems are solved and a technical advance is achieved in the art by a system and method that uses trees to represent, exchange, query, store and update data. In terms of what can be represented, this system has the flexibility of XML, but also provides a storage mechanism, which XML does not. The tree system facilitates easy access by external systems by producing tabular output, in a manner similar to the relational model. Unlike the relational model, however, it is possible to support diverse structures within the same search space. Finally, the tree model supports a simple external interface using a tree-valued language that can be used by external systems.

Problems solved by technology

As will be discussed in the following sections, conventional database models fail to adequately support such complex systems and fail to provide a unified search space for the query and aggregation of results.

However, it does not easily lend itself to representing collections of data with diverse structures.

This approach is very inflexible, and in the worst case, the addition of a new structure requires all the procedures to be rewritten.

This approach leads to redundancy and expansion of storage requirements in the database.

Any new structures that do not fit the database structure either have to be trimmed to fit or result in a restructuring of all the data and procedures.

However, the drawback of object-oriented databases is that they are extremely difficult to access by external systems.

However, XML does not offer any storage, update or query mechanism and the XML representation of objects is too verbose to be an option for storing data.

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