US Patent 7624097 Abstract records

Embodiments of the invention provide methods, systems, and articles of manufacture improving the process of query composition, query processing, and presenting query results to users of an abstract database. Embodiments of the present invention organize and view data using abstract records. Specifically, users compose a query according to the logical relationships present in the data. Rather than evaluate conditions against a set of rows from a relational table, conditions included in abstract query are evaluated against instances of an abstract record. Instances that satisfy the conditions specified by an abstract query are returned as query results. In a specific case abstract records are used to evaluate a “never exists conditions, that determine the absence of data in an abstract records that satisfy a particular condition.