ASSOCIATION INDEX LINKING CHILD AND PARENT TABLES

摘要

The creation and updating of an association index that defines a linking between a child table and a parent table in a database system, and in which each of at least some of the parent table rows have an associated expression defining rules for mapping child table rows to the associated parent table row. The association index may be constructed with one pass of the parent table by evaluating the mapping definition to identifying associated child table rows. If there are such associations for a given parent table row, the linking module may record that association in an association index. If there are changes made that potentially invalidate an association status (whether an association or lack thereof), a re-evaluation module then determines which mapping definitions for which parent rows need to be re-evaluated, and potentially for which child table rows, rather than perform the entire process again.