System and method of generating associations

A method for automatically generating associations of items in a system including a plurality of transactions with each transaction including one or more items capable of forming said associations, said method comprising:

• a) specifying a support criteria indicating a strength of desired associations of items;
• b) imposing lexicographic ordering of items;
• c) implementing said lexicographic ordering of items for recursively generating a hierarchical tree structure comprising nodes organized as one or more levels of itemsets, each node representing an item set having item associations determined to have satisfied said specified support criteria,
• d) characterizing nodes of said tree structure as being either active and enabling generation of new nodes at a new level of said tree, or inactive, at any given time;
• e) traversing said tree structure and projecting each of said transactions onto currently active nodes of said tree structure to generate projected transaction result sets at each said active node;
• and
• f) counting said items included in said projected transaction result sets of said projected transactions at said active nodes to determine whether said further itemsets satisfy said specified support criteria and adding said itemsets meeting said specified support criteria to said tree structure at said new level.

A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for automatically generating associations of items in a system of transactions wherein each transaction includes one or more items capable of forming said associations, said method steps comprising:

• a) specifying a support criteria indicating a strength of desired associations of items;
• b) imposing a lexicographic ordering of items;
• c) implementing said lexicographic ordering of items for recursively generating a hierarchical tree structure comprising nodes organized as one or more levels of itemsets, each node representing an itemset having item associations determined to have satisfied said specified support criteria,
• d) characterizing nodes of said tree structure as being either active and enabling generation of new nodes at a new level of said tree, or inactive, at any given time;
• e) traversing said tree structure and projecting each of said transactions onto currently active nodes of said tree structure to generate projected transaction result sets at each said active node;
• and
• f) counting said items included in said projected transaction result sets of said projected transactions at said active nodes to determine whether said further itemsets satisfy said specified support criteria and adding said itemsets meeting said specified support criteria to said tree structure at said new level.