ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,361,025, issued on July 15, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).
"Hierarchical data" was invented by Andrew John Coleman (Petersfield, Great Britain), John Anthony Reeve (Winchester, Great Britain) and Trevor Clifford Dolby (Southampton, Great Britain).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A computer-implemented method, system and computer program product for identifying ancestor objects in hierarchical data configured for processing with a query, the query having an associated abstract syntax tree. The abstract syntax tree may be processed so as to generate an augmented abstract syntax tree which includes parent...