US 20030028509A1
(19) United States
(12) Patent Application Publication (io) Pub. No.: US 2003/0028509 Al
Sah et al. (43) Pub. Date: Feb. 6,2003
(54) STORAGE OF ROW-COLUMN DATA
(76) Inventors: Adam Sah, Berkeley, CA (US); Eric
Karlson, Alameda, CA (US); Cimarron
Taylor, Oakland, CA (US); Nathan
Watson, San Mateo, CA (US)
Correspondence Address:
BLAKELY SOKOLOFF TAYLOR & ZAFMAN 12400 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD, SEVENTH FLOOR
LOS ANGELES, CA 90025 (US)
(21) Appl. No.: 09/923,498
(22) Filed: Aug. 6, 2001
Publication Classification (51) Int. CI.7 G06F 7 00
(57) ABSTRACT
Table data is stored by parsing the table data into columns of values, formatting each column into a data stream, and transferring each data stream to a storage device for storage as a continuous strip of data. The strip of data is stored as a file that is not structured as a series of pages. The formatting of the data stream may include compressing the column values to minimize the length of the data strip. A particular compression procedure may be used that derives a code for each value in the column from a number of occurrences of the value in the column and replaces the value in the data stream with the corresponding code.
