Patent attributes
Systems and techniques are described for efficient, general-purpose, and potentially decentralized databases, distributed storage systems, version control systems, and/or other types of data repositories. Data is represented in a database system in such a way that any value is represented by a unique identifier which is derived from the value itself. Any database peer in the system will derive an identical identifier from the same logical value. The identifier for a value may be derived using a variety of mechanisms, including, without limitation, a hash function known to all peers in the system. The values may be organized hierarchically as a tree of nodes. Any two peers storing the same logical value will deterministically represent that value with a graph, such as the described “Prolly” tree, having the same topology and hash value, irrespective of possibly differing sequences of mutations which caused each to arrive at the same final value.
