The prospects for large capacity set support systems imbedded within generalized data management systems

A "set support system" is a system capable of maintaining sets of elements on mass storage and manipulating those sets using standard set operations (e.g. union, intersection, difference). The concept of a "large capacity" set support system (LCSSS) has two major implications. First, if U is the universal set of order N (i.e. N is the number of elements of U), for the largest application possible under the LCSSS, then N is greater than or equal to 1 billion. Secondly relatively small subsets of U (i.e. subsets up to the order of 100,000 elements) should be maintained and manipulated very efficiently. Some degree of inefficiency may be tolerated for larger subsets.