hierarchiescoordinate
hierarchiescoordinate is a concept used to describe a coordinate-based representation for items arranged in a hierarchy. It refers to encoding the location of a node within a tree-like structure as a vector of integers, where each element indicates the position of the node among its siblings at a given level. There is no single standard for hierarchiescoordinate; implementations vary in how depth is encoded and how missing levels are represented.
In a typical scheme, coordinates are sequences of nonnegative integers. The root node may be represented by
Semantics for comparison and navigation are usually defined lexicographically by the coordinate vectors. A is ancestor
Common uses include compactly encoding hierarchical keys in databases, file systems, or ontologies; enabling efficient range
Other terms with similar goals include path encoding, nested sets, and hierarchical label indexing. hierarchiescoordinate emphasizes