System and method for generating horizontal view for SQL queries to vertical database
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsRakesh Agrawal, Amit Somani, Yirong Xu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A database including vertical tables useful for storing large numbers of objects having potentially thousands of attributes in, e.g., e-commerce applications. To support querying the vertical database using conventional SQL, a horizontal view over the underlying vertical tables is defined, and then queries are posed against the view. The queries are automatically transformed and executed against the vertical tables. If desired, the query results can be transformed back to a horizontal format. In this way, it appears to the user that a conventional horizontal data format is being used.
Claims38
A computer system, comprising:
- a general purpose computer coupled to a relational database system characterized by at least one ternary vertical table, the computer including logic for undertaking method acts including:
- defining a logical horizontal view over the vertical table;
- receiving at least one SQL query against the horizontal view;
- transforming the query to render a transformed query;
- and
- executing the transformed query against the vertical table to generate an output.
A computer program device comprising:
- a computer program storage device readable by a digital processing apparatus;
- and
- a program on the program storage device and including instructions executable by the digital processing apparatus for querying at least one vertical table in a database system, the program comprising:
- computer readable code means for transforming a horizontal-based SQL query into a transformed query having a format for execution against at least one vertical table.
A method for extracting data from at least one vertical table in a database, comprising the acts of:
- defining an enablement layer including at least a horizontal view representative of the vertical table;
- and
- using the enablement layer, extracting data from the database based on an SQL query without requiring a user to tailor the query to a vertical format.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.