Sort digits as number collation in server

• US 20060190452A1
• Filed: 02/24/2005
• Published: 08/24/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 02/24/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ellis, Nigel R., Negrin, Richard L.
• Granted Patent: US 7,765,219 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/284 Relational databases

Abstract

Systems and methods that supply a sort order for strings with defined digit and non-digit tokens, via employing a normalization procedure that assigns numeric values to the digit based tokens, and that further leverages on existing database collations. As such, plugging a particular collation into the sort engine determines a weight for the various characters relative to each other, and in conjunction with the normalization procedure, provides an intuitive sort order for the strings.

Claims

1. A sort order engine for a sort of data strings that are logically parsed into digit and non digit tokens, comprising:

a normalization component that assigns numeric values to digit based tokens of a data string; and

a collation component that determines a weight of various characters of the data string relative to each other to provide an intuitive sort order.

2. The sort order engine of claim 1, wherein a digit based token comprises a sequence of leading zeroes.

3. The sort order engine of claim 2, the digit based token is stripped of leading zeroes to form a stripped digit group.

4. The sort order engine of claim 3, a significant digit represents a digit count of the stripped digit group.

5. A computer implemented method that facilitates sorting data strings, comprising:

defining a data string as a series of tokens such that each token is composed of either digit or non-digit characters; and

assigning a numeric value to digit-based tokens.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising sorting respective strings as a function of integer comparison on respective assigned numeric values.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising applying the assigning act to western equivalent of non-western digits.

8. The method of claim 5 further comprising plugging a particular collation into a sort engine to determine a weight for various characters of the data string.

9. The method of claim 5 further comprising ranking the data string with a date format based on a variant sort algorithm.

10. The method of claim 5 further comprising parsing the data strings into digit tokens and non-digit tokens.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising striping leading zeroes from a group of numbers associated with a digit token, to form a stripped digit group.

12. The method of claim 10 further comprising determining whether a digit token is all zeroes, and if so, ignoring the digit token.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising counting a number of digits in the stripped digit group, to represent a significant digit number.

14. The method of claim 13 further comprising placing the significant digit in front of the stripped digit group.

15. The method of claim 14 further comprising placing the significant digit immediately to a left of the stripped digit group.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising padding the significant digit with zeroes.

17. The method of claim 15 further comprising employing the significant digit to converge a sort order to a logical subset.

18. A method that facilitates sorting data strings via a sort order engine, comprising:

defining a collation for the sort order engine to determine weight of various characters of a data string relative to each other;

tokenizing sequence of characters associated with a data string inputted to the sort order engine, to at least one of digit tokens and non-digit tokens.

19. The method of claim 18 further comprising normalizing the digit tokens by assigning numeric values thereto.

20. The method of claim 19 further comprising coupling the normalizing act with the defining act to leverage on existing database systems for an intuitive sort order.