A method and apparatus for processing path-based database operations is provided. According to one aspect, a "parent row ID" column is added to a directory links table. For each row in the table, the value of the "parent row ID" column indicates the row ID, in the table, of the node that is that row's node's parent in the file hierarchy. To determine whether a particular node is within a specified path of the file hierarchy, the particular node's pathname is derived by visiting child-to-parent links indicated in the table and prepending, to the front of a pathname being constructed for the particular node, node names indicated in the visited rows. Each parent node's row in the directory links table is located using the "parent row ID" column of the child node's row. The resulting pathname is compared with the specified path to determine whether the particular node exists therein.