US 11,720,543 B2
Enforcing path consistency in graph database path query evaluation
Andrew J. Carter, Mountain View, CA (US); Ying Lu, Sunnyvale, CA (US); Siddharth Shah, Mountain View, CA (US); Andrew Rodriguez, Sunnyvale, CA (US); and Scott M. Meyer, Berkeley, CA (US)
Assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed on Sep. 3, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/466,717.
Application 17/466,717 is a continuation of application No. 16/588,644, filed on Sep. 30, 2019, granted, now 11,113,267.
Prior Publication US 2021/0397601 A1, Dec. 23, 2021
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 17/00 (2019.01); G06F 16/23 (2019.01); G06F 16/901 (2019.01); G06F 16/248 (2019.01); G06F 17/16 (2006.01); G06F 16/28 (2019.01); G06F 16/22 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/2365 (2019.01) [G06F 16/2282 (2019.01); G06F 16/248 (2019.01); G06F 16/284 (2019.01); G06F 16/9024 (2019.01); G06F 17/16 (2013.01)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for storing intermediate results of a path query in a computer memory, the method comprising:
processing a query that traverses at least two nodes and at least one edge of a graph database;
configuring the computer memory according to an intermediate data structure, the intermediate data structure comprising:
a plurality of tables, each table comprising a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns;
a plurality of links between rows in different tables of the plurality of tables; and
at least one invariant that tracks or enforces path consistency during the processing of the query;
storing data related to processing a first portion of the query in a source table of the plurality of tables;
applying one or more operations to one or more rows of the source table;
storing output of the one or more operations in one or more rows of a destination table of the plurality of tables; and
creating a link between the one or more rows of the source table and the one or more rows of the destination table.