Patent 7130859 was granted and assigned to NEC Corporation on October, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A data structure allowing the necessary amount of memory to be reduced while maintaining or improving search performance is disclosed. The data structure in which items of data are stored for search includes: a tree structure in which the items or data are stored except for a portion of the items of data corresponding to a sub-tree structure, which is a selected portion of an assumed tree structure formed by all the items of data; and an equivalent table storing the portion of the items of data in table form.