Following is the claim for this invention: -

1. In this invention we store Variable-Length Records in the database using a very unique architecture. Let us consider page present in main memory or disk to be collection of blocks of fixed size. To efficiently use free memory of a page and all pages which are free to be used, we maintain a list of free blocks with each block having Page identifier, starting physical address of the block and the next pointer pointing to the next contiguous block of same page or first block of next contiguous page.

One or more blocks could be assigned for a Variable-Length Record and the Record identifier would consist of Page identifier of the first block, physical address of the first block and total number of blocks in the record. Also to facilitate easier deletion of records, we will maintain a Page Directory where each entry points to the ordered and contiguous list of free blocks of the page and the last block of the page points to the first block of next contiguous page if it is free. Also in addition each entry in Page Directory will maintain ordering of list of free blocks when inserting new list of free blocks for the page by merging two sorted list of free blocks with respect to their physical addresses. The above novel technique of storing Variable-Length Records in a database is the claim for this invention.