US 7,454,428 B2Granted

Network data model for relational database management system

AssigneeOracle International Corporation

InventorsCheng-Hua Wang, Siva Ravada

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Abstract

A shareable application program interface (API) and network data model infrastructure which is used in combination with a relational database to provide data storage and processing functions for network data. The network data model is stored in relational tables that describe a set of nodes and links forming a network wherein each node represents an object of interest and each link represents a relationship between two nodes. A generic node table contains a row describing each node in the network, and a generic link table contains row data describing each link. In addition, a path table whose contents are commonly generated by network analysis procedures contains rows which describe corresponding paths each consisting of an alternating sequence of nodes and links. The sequence of links in each path are identified in a separate path-link table. The system provides two application program interfaces, a PL/SQL API and a Java API, which permit executing application programs to use stored procedures for creating the node and link tables, store data describing nodes and links in the tables, and perform standard operations on the network data.

Claims16

Dependent claims

A relational database management system comprising computer readable storage media for storing instructions executable by a processor for storing and analyzing network data stored in relational tables that describe a set of nodes and links forming a network wherein each of said nodes represents an object of interest and each of said links represents a relationship between two of said nodes, said computer readable storage media storing:

a generic node table containing a plurality of node table rows each of which contains data describing a given node in said set of nodes,
a generic link table containing a plurality of link table rows each of which contains data describing a link between two nodes in said set of nodes and further identifying the two node table rows in said generic node table that contain data describing each of said two nodes, and
wherein said instructions executable by a processor implement an application program interface which enables external executing application programs to create said generic node table and said generic link table, to store data describing nodes in said generic node table, to store data describing links between said nodes in said generic link table, and to perform a plurality of standard operations on the data in said generic node table and said generic link table.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.