Reusable prime number labeling scheme for hierarchical data representation in relational databases

Abstract

Hierarchical data structures are important for many computing and information science disciplines including data mining, terrain modeling, and image analysis. There are many specialized hierarchical data management systems, but they are not always available. Alternatively, relational databases are far more common and offer superior reliability, scalability, and performance. However, relational databases cannot natively store and manage hierarchical data. Labeling schemes resolve this issue by labeling all nodes with alphanumeric strings that can be safely stored and retrieved from a database. One such scheme uses prime numbers for its labeling purposes, however the performance and space utilization of this method are not optimal. We propose a more efficient and compact version of this approach.