Need help considering a architecture or programming language for a particular solution

I'm working on a solution revolving around group membership based on particular attributes and values. Say there is Group1, and Group1 has a required attribute that an object has a name like 'name*' where * is a wildcard. There could be anywhere between 1 and over 100 attributes on a group that must be satisfied though and groups can have other groups as attributes on them.

Is there a particular language, pattern, or architecture I should consider with this problem? The bulk of the processing is done on the database right now, but potentially querying over 100 tables is time consuming and I don't have transactions in place so tables lock while reading from them (for now, I know, I'll get there). This process also runs pretty constantly because an update to any object in the system that is an attribute on a group requires the system to go back and find what the new/current membership for the group is.

If there is anything I can clarify, please let me know, or poke at the solution in general if you wish.

Thanks!