TRIE-STRUCTURE FORMULATION AND NAVIGATION FOR JOINING

A computer-navigable trie structure used in order to represent predicates for matching foreign keys to primary rows in a primary table. The predicates may be wide ranging, and each may be represented by a corresponding descendant path of the trie structure, and defines which foreign keys are to be mapped to the particular row. The trie structure is built by incrementally augmenting the trie structure as each predicate is analyzed. During later use of the trie structure, each foreign key that is a candidate for mapping to one or more parent rows are evaluated. The foreign key is used to navigate through a set of one or more descendant paths of the computer-navigable trie structure. Matching parent rows may then be identified based on the identity of the navigated descendant paths. The foreign key may then be mapped to each of the one or more matching parent rows.