Patent · US Expired

Determination of records with a specified number of largest or smallest values in a parallel database system

US6694324B1 · kind B1 · utility

10Cited by
17References
21Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateDec 16, 1999
Grant dateFeb 17, 2004
Priority date
Expiry dateDec 16, 2019

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
  • CPC primaryY10S707/99943
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for selecting one or more of the highest ranking records in a database system that has one or more processing units. At each processing unit, a candidate list of records is generated in a memory space of the processing unit. Each record contains a field value. The generated candidate list of records is ranked based on the field value as each new candidate is added to the generated candidate list. When the memory space of the processing unit is insufficient, the ranked candidate list of records are transferred from the memory space of the processing unit to a data store. At the data store, a predefined number of extrema values are identified by using the transferred candidate list of records.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.