Scoping queries in a search engine
First Claim
1. In a system including a data store, wherein the data store is indexed by a content index using terms, a method for scoping a search of the data store, wherein the search includes one or more terms, the method comprising:
- an act of including an identifier in the content index, wherein the identifier is implicitly included in the search;
an act of identifying a first list of document identifiers with the one or more terms from the content index;
an act of identifying a second list of document identifiers with the identifier from the content index; and
an act of comparing the second list of document identifiers with the first list of document identifiers to identify a subset of document identifiers that satisfy the search.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Systems and methods for scoping a search. When a content index for electronic data is built, one or more scope restrictions are included in the content index. The scope restriction may be, for example, a root folder identifier, a mailbox identifier, or a URL. Because the scope restriction is included in the content index random access of the property store to determine the scope is avoided. Rather, the scope restriction is implicitly added to a search that uses the content index. By including a scope restriction in the search query, the search results identified from the content index are limited to results that match the scope restriction. Advantageously, the effect of including the scope restriction in the search is ignored if the search results are relatively small or when including the scope restriction provides little benefit.
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Citations
32 Claims
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1. In a system including a data store, wherein the data store is indexed by a content index using terms, a method for scoping a search of the data store, wherein the search includes one or more terms, the method comprising:
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an act of including an identifier in the content index, wherein the identifier is implicitly included in the search;
an act of identifying a first list of document identifiers with the one or more terms from the content index;
an act of identifying a second list of document identifiers with the identifier from the content index; and
an act of comparing the second list of document identifiers with the first list of document identifiers to identify a subset of document identifiers that satisfy the search. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. In a system including one or more data stores, wherein a search engine gathers and indexes data from the one or more data stores in a content index, a method for focusing a search of the data, the search including one or more terms, the method comprising:
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an act of including one or more scope restrictions in the content index when the search engine indexes the data, wherein the one or more scope restrictions are non-text;
an act of adding a scope restriction to the search, the scope restriction included in the one or more scope restrictions;
an act of identifying a first list of document identifiers from the content index using the one or more terms of the search;
an act of identifying a second list of document identifiers from the content index using the scope restriction; and
an act of focusing the first list of document identifiers by using the second list of document identifiers to generate a subset list of document identifiers from the first list of document identifiers. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31)
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23. In a system including a mail store partitioned into one or more mailboxes, wherein a search engine has indexed the mail store in a content index, a method for scoping a search of the mail store, the search including one or more terms, the method comprising steps for:
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the search engine including one or more identifiers in the content index, wherein the one or more identifiers identify the one or more mailboxes;
including a root folder identifier in the search, the root folder identifier included in the one or more identifiers;
identifying a first list of document identifiers from the content index using the one or more terms, wherein the first list of document identifiers correspond to messages in the one or more mailboxes;
identifying a second list of document identifiers from the content index using the root folder identifier, wherein the second list of document identifiers correspond to messages in a mailbox identified by the root folder identifier; and
generating a subset list of document identifiers by removing document identifiers from the first list of document identifiers that do not match document identifiers in the second list of document identifiers. - View Dependent Claims (32)
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Specification