US 20030037037A1
(19) United States
(12) Patent Application Publication (io) Pub. No.: US 2003/0037037 Al
Adams et al. (43) Pub. Date: Feb. 20,2003
(54) METHOD OF STORING, MAINTAINING AND DISTRIBUTING COMPUTER INTELLIGIBLE ELECTRONIC DATA
(75) Inventors: Steven E. Adams, Dublin, OH (US);
Steven R. Zimmerman, Columbus, OH
(US); James R. Davee, Clayton, OH
(US); Fouzia S. Kiani, Grove City, OH
(US)
Correspondence Address:
Richard R. Ruble
JACKSON WALKER L.L.P.
Suite 2100
112 E. Pecan Street
San Antonio, TX 78205 (US)
(73) Assignee: EC Outlook, Inc.
(21) Appl. No.: 09/938,973
(22) Filed: Aug. 24, 2001
Related U.S. Application Data
(60) Provisional application No. 60/312,974, filed on Aug. 17, 2001.
The present invention provides an improved method ol storing, maintaining, and distributing computer intelligible electronic data that substantially reduces the cost and complexity of traditional database management systems. The present invention provides a unstructured database capable of efficiently accessing and storing electronic data, regardless of the data's structure. Instead of slotting incoming data into a predefined rigid storage structure, the present invention analyzes the inherent structure of the incoming data. Based upon the results of this analysis, the unstructured database of the present invention generates a storage model using tokenized symbology representing the inherent structure of the data. The tokenized symbology of the present invention is utilized to provide immediate access to each data field in a given record. The present invention utilizes logical and positional pointers to allow entire records associated with any data field to be generated without the need for additional search queries.
