41. A compaction method according to claim 40 wherein the designation is a type byte appended to the compacted record and specifying a subpartition, the compacted record being stored in the subpartition, the subpartition being associated with the pack method.
40. A compaction method, which comprises: selecting one of a plurality of fields of a database; reading a plurality of data values from the selected field; identifying a single-position pattern, the single-position pattern being a character which occurs repeatedly within the selected field at a specific character position of the data values; creating a plurality of compacted data values from the data values by deleting the single-position pattern from each of the data values within which the single-position pattern occurs; storing a particular one of the compacted data values in the selected field of a compacted record; and associating with the compacted record a designation, the designation indicating a pack method for each of the fields within the compacted record including that the selected field of the compacted record contains the particular compacted data value with the single-position pattern deleted.