A mechanism by which rule attributes of varying types and numbers can be stored and searched in an efficient manner is provided by storing attribute values of each rule in a child table of a parent rule table. The child table is normalized and contains a foreign key pointing back to the parent rule table and has attribute-value pairs as table columns of the child table. Each rule is then represented by one row of the parent rule table and one or more corresponding rows of the child rule details table. A variable and unlimited number of attribute dimensions is supported among the rules, and search performance is improved through the use of database indexes on the rule details table attribute columns. Metadata representing the structure of the child rule details table will identify the data attributes for each dimension.