Patent · US Active

Pruning disk blocks of a clustered table in a relational database management system

US8996544B2 · kind B2 · utility

30Cited by
99References
18Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateSep 28, 2012
Grant dateMar 31, 2015
Priority date
Expiry dateFeb 26, 2033

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F16/285
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Techniques are provided for generating a “dimensional zonemap” that allows a database server to avoid scanning disk blocks of a fact table based on filter predicates in a query that qualify one or more dimension tables. The zonemap divides the fact table into sets of contiguous disk blocks referred to as “zones”. For each zone, a minimum value and a maximum value for each of one or more “zoned” columns of the dimension tables is determined and maintained in the zonemap. For a query that contains a filter predicate on a zoned column, the predicate value can be compared to the minimum value and maximum value maintained for a zone for that zoned column to determine whether a scan of the disk blocks of the zone can be skipped.

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