Automated Natural Hierarchy Determination for Data Sets
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for organizing data in a hierarchical manner within databases require significant overhead for design, implementation, and maintenance, and lack automation for determining appropriate visualizations and natural hierarchies.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that analyzes a data set to determine categories and pair-wise combinations, setting fields with distinct counts of one as parent and child in a default hierarchy, thereby automating the identification of natural hierarchies and reducing overhead.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If hierarchical organization of data is designed and implemented manually, then the data can be organized in a hierarchical manner to facilitate accessing and manipulating, but significant overhead is involved for design, implementation, and maintenance
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically determines hierarchical relationships by analyzing the data itself. The computer system performs pair-wise field comparisons, calculates distinct counts, and identifies parent-child relationships without manual intervention, allowing the data to organize itself hierarchically based on its inherent structure
Solution Approach 2:
The manual mechanical process of designing and implementing hierarchical data organization is replaced with an automated computational system. The system uses algorithms to analyze data patterns, calculate distinct counts for field combinations, and automatically establish hierarchical relationships, eliminating the need for manual design and implementation
2Ease of operation
If manual design and implementation of hierarchical data organization is performed, then hierarchical structure can be established, but time-consuming processes are involved
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary automated analysis of the data to pre-determine hierarchical relationships before any manual intervention is needed. By automatically analyzing data patterns and calculating distinct counts upfront, the system establishes the hierarchical structure in advance, eliminating time-consuming manual design phases
Solution Approach 2:
The data organization process serves itself through automated analysis. The system independently examines the data, identifies relationships through pair-wise field comparisons, and establishes hierarchies without requiring manual design time, significantly reducing the overall time required for hierarchical data organization
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure describes, generally, methods and systems for determining a natural hierarchy for a data set. The method determines one or more pair-wise combinations within the data set. The one or more pair-wise combinations each include a first field and a second field from the database. The method then determines a distinct count for each entry in the first field grouped by the second field of the one or more pair-wise combinations, and determines that the distinct counts for each entry has a value equal to one. The method further includes based on the determination that the distinct counts for each entry have a value equal to one, setting the first field in the pair-wise combination as the parent and the second field in the pair-wise combination as the child in a default hierarchy for the data set.