A METHOD FOR REPRESENTING AND STORING INFORMATION AS A PATTERN OF POINTERS

This invention is an information storage system which provides a self-contained environment for database management. Data are stored in the system not as conventional entries in memory locations, but instead as a group of connections between database sets. Procedures are also encoded as database set connections, and not in conventional form. Data and procedure cannot exist independently, in the present invention; instead, they are grouped together, into constructs called Contexts. Because the connections themselves are the data, the system is substantially independent of the particular hardware on which the system is implemented. The environment includes an editor which uses an icon-based syntax to create and manipulate data and procedure structures according to the invention. The present invention greatly reduces the time required to develop and maintain a database management system or other computer program. The system is not limited by the size of data variables. Also, a change in a data value, in one location, automatically changes that value throughout the system. Programs designed with the environment of the present invention are easier to code than conventional programs, and are generally self-documenting.