Appeal No. 2002-1897 Page 2
Application No. 09/207,420
Because the relations established in the data structure require that linked records in
linked tables are completed before such a correspondence can be expressed, explains
the appellant, a relational database is too rigid to model a physical reality in which
organizations change continually and data are supplied at random times. (Id.)
In contrast, the appellant's inventive data structure is dynamic "in the sense that
no demands are made on the time sequence in which data [are] processed and
organizational expansion and other changes can be accommodated without difficulty
and often without any appreciable adaptation of . . . software." (Appeal Br. at 2.) More
specifically, data are stored in a dynamic structure which for every entity provides space
for a unique identifier, a first set of pointers to subordinate entities, and a second set of
pointers to superior entities. Within the data structure, "a status message related to an
entity is likewise valid for all subordinate entities and, hence, for all subordinate entities
of these subordinate entities and so on until the bottom of the structure is reached." (Id.
at 3-4.)
A further understanding of the invention can be achieved by reading the following
claim.
1. Device for managing data relating to entities which may or may
not be known beforehand, comprising a central processing unit which,
supplied with a suitable program code, is capable of receiving and storing
the data in the form of status messages relating to one or more entities,
characterized in that the data is stored in a dynamic structure which for
each entity provides space for a unique identification and for a first
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