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EP0918295A2
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EP
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Information retrieval from hierarchical compound documents
Assignee: Energetic Power Investment Ltd
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Filing: 1998-11-02
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Granted: —
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Expires: 2018-11-02
Abstract
Abstract A search query is applied to documents in a document repository wherein the documents are organized into a hierarchy. A search engine searches the hierarchy to return documents which match a query term either directly or indirectly. A specific embodiment of the search engine organizes the query term into individual subterms and matches the subterms against documents, returning only those documents which indirectly match the entire search query term and directly match at least one of the query subterms.
Inventors
- 👤 Jiong Wu
Bibliographic Details
Application Number
—
Jurisdiction
EP
Data Source
google_patents
Last Synchronized
2026-11-09 22:29
CPC Classifications
G; G06; G06F; G06F16/00; G06F16/90; G06F16/95; G06F16/954; G06F16/30; G06F16/31; G06F16/313; G06F16/316; G06F16/322; G06F16/951; G06F16/953; Y; Y10; Y10S; Y10S707/00; Y10S707/912; Y10S707/917; Y10S707/953; Y10S707/956; Y10S707/99931; Y10S707/99933; Y10S707/99934
Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 8
Claim 1
Independent Claim
86 words
A method of searching for documents stored in a
document repository, wherein documents contain searchable
elements and are organized into a document hierarchy, the
method comprising the steps of: providing a search expression to a search engine,
wherein the search expression is a logical function describing
a set of searchable elements; generating a list of at least one match, where a
match over multiple documents is expressed as a path in the
hierarchy which links the multiple documents; and outputting the list as a search result.
Claim 2
Dependent Claim
19 words
The method of claim 1, wherein the searchable
elements are words and documents and comprise at least some
text.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim
63 words
The method of claim 1, further comprising a step
of searching for direct matches or indirect matches, wherein a
direct match is a document which matches the search expression
and an indirect match is a document which only matches the
search expression when contents of the indirectly matching
document are combined with contents of the indirectly matching
document's ancestor documents in the hierarchy.
Claim 4
Dependent Claim
25 words
The method of claim 1. wherein the step of
searching comprises a step of searching for components of the
search expression in an element index.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim
35 words
The method of claim 1, further comprising a step
of assigning a document number to each document in a
hierarchical tree such that the document numbers within any
branch of the hierarchical tree are consecutive.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim
36 words
The method of claim 1, wherein the search
expression is a formula comprising operands and operators,
wherein the operands comprise specified searchable elements or
wild cards and wherein the operators comprise AND, OR, ADD or
MINUS.
Claim 7
Dependent Claim
23 words
The method of claim 1, wherein a document is a
string representing a specific topic and the hierarchy is a
hierarchy of topics.
Claim 8
Independent Claim
183 words
A method of efficiently storing and searching
hierarchical data, comprising the steps of: organizing data elements into a hierarchy, wherein
each data element has a position in the hierarchy and has
ancestor data elements above the position or descendant data
elements below the position or both; assigning a data element number to each data element
such that the data element number of a data element is greater
than a data element number of any ancestor data element and is
less than a data element number of any other data element
which is not a descendant of the ancestor data element and has
a data element number greater than the ancestor data element
number; and applying a search expression to the hierarchy to
identify data elements which match the search expression
either directly or indirectly, wherein the search expression
is matched directly when content of the data element alone
matches the search expression and is matched indirectly when
the data element does not match directly, but the content of
the data element and at least one ancestor data element
together match the search expression.
References Cited (Backward Citations)
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