Apple didn't patent the LCD screen, or the touch screen, or even multi-touch. They (presumably) did, however, patent a multi-touch lcd screen used for controlling a cell phone. (This may be a bad example since i don't know what they patented, but you get the idea).

Assuming there's no prior art (which is a big assumption), No-one has implemented an auto-trimming database column before, therefore it's a new process.

Personally I think the patent is ridiculous (there are big problems with the definition of 'novel' with respect to software), but there's a specific reasoning that leads to this.