Subroutine-type computer program for enhancing the speed of data processing in data management programs systems

Claim 1

A dynamic method of enhancing the data processing speed of a general purpose digital computer programmed with a data management digital computer program comprising the steps of: (a) storing for operation in a general purpose digital computer in combination with a data management program an external utility program arranged and constructed to designate, upon being called by an application program at the option of the operator, a large block of memory in the working memory of the general purpose digital computer available for processing data in said general purpose computer to serve as a virtual record storage buffer into which data records from relatively slower access mass storage means associated with said general purpose computer can be transferred, (b) determining through said external utility program an amount of total working memory sufficient to effectively operate said data management program, (c) selecting by use of said external utility a capacity of the designated block of memory serving as the virtual record storage buffer in the working memory of said computer sufficient to accept a plurality of data records from mass storage memory while maintaining sufficient undesignated memory in the working memory for processing within bounds determined automatically by the external utility of the data to be processed by the principal database processing section of said data management program, (d) reading by use of said external utility from the mass storage memory means into the virtual record storage buffer as much data in data record form as the virtual record storage buffer will hold, (e) at least partially processing said data in the virtual record storage buffer in sequential order by use of said external utility without movement of individual data being processed between mass storage memory and working memory whereby the speed of accessing and processing said data records is enhanced at least by a factor of four over that provided by the primary data management program operating alone, (f) passing the at least partially processed data from the external utility to the data management program for further handling, the external utility retaining processing control, (g) determining by use of said external utility if there is any data in mass storage memory remaining to be processed and in the event there is, repeating steps (d), (e), (f), and (g) as many times as necessary to process all such data until no data which is desired to be processed remains to be processed, and (h) returning processing control to the data management program by which any further processing is accomplished.