System for fulfilling an information need using extended matching techniques
First Claim
1. A method of fulfilling an information need employing an index stored on a computer-readable medium and comprised of preanalyzed contexts of terms appearing within a plurality of documents, comprising the steps of:
- receiving a query comprised of one or more fully specified terms and an information need, wherein the information need is represented by one or more at least partially unspecified terms;
identifying contexts in the index that contain the one or more fully specified terms and zero or more at least partially unspecified terms; and
locating one or more matches for the information need within the identified contexts.
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Abstract
The invention offers new approaches to fulfilling an information need, in particular to finding a result for a query based on a large body of information such as a collection of documents. The invention accepts a query containing an unspecified portion that expresses the information need. The invention locates matches for the query within a body of information and returns the matches or portions thereof in addition to or instead of identifiers for documents in which the matches are found. The invention allows placement of term ordering restrictions, and allows intervening words between the search terms as they appear in the searched documents or contexts. The invention ranks the matches in order to provide the most relevant information. One preferred method of ranking considers the number of instances of a match among a plurality of documents. The invention further defines a new type of index that includes contexts in which terms occur and provides methods of searching such indices to fulfill an information need.
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Citations
63 Claims
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1. A method of fulfilling an information need employing an index stored on a computer-readable medium and comprised of preanalyzed contexts of terms appearing within a plurality of documents, comprising the steps of:
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receiving a query comprised of one or more fully specified terms and an information need, wherein the information need is represented by one or more at least partially unspecified terms;
identifying contexts in the index that contain the one or more fully specified terms and zero or more at least partially unspecified terms; and
locating one or more matches for the information need within the identified contexts. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43)
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7. A method of fulfilling an information need employing an index stored on a computer-readable medium and comprised of preanalyzed contexts of terms appearing within a plurality of documents, information indicating category restrictions that the terms and contexts satisfy, and identifiers of the documents and contexts containing the terms, comprising the steps of:
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receiving a query comprised of one or more fully specified terms and an information need and at least a partial restriction on the order that the one or more fully specified terms and the information need may appear in a potential matching context, wherein the information need is represented by one or more at least partially unspecified terms reflecting a category restriction;
identifying contexts in the index that contain the one or more fully specified terms and the one or more at least partially unspecified terms in the specified order;
locating one or matches for the information need within the identified contexts. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14)
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13. A method of fulfilling an information need employing an index stored on a computer-readable medium and comprised of preanalyzed contexts of terms appearing within a plurality of documents, comprising the steps of:
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receiving a query comprised of one or more fully specified terms and an information need, wherein the information need is represented by one or more at least partially unspecified terms;
converting the query into a Boolean expression;
identifying contexts identifiers satisfying the Boolean expression; and
locating one or more matches for the information need within the identified contexts.
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44. A method of fulfilling an information need based on documents stored on a computer-readable medium comprising the steps of:
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storing an index identifying documents containing terms;
storing contexts for terms, wherein a context occurs in a document;
receiving a query containing an unspecified portion; and
identifying one or more matches for the query within the contexts. - View Dependent Claims (46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56)
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45. A method of fulfilling an information need based on documents stored on a computer-readable medium comprising the steps of:
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storing an index identifying documents containing terms;
storing contexts, wherein a context occurs in a document;
storing information to retrieve a list of contexts for terms;
receiving a query containing an at least partially unspecified portion; and
identifying one or more matches for the query within the contexts.
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47. A method of fulfilling an information need based on documents and an index stored on a computer-readable medium comprising the steps of:
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storing contexts for terms, wherein the context occurs in a document;
storing information identifying a document in which a context occurs;
receiving a query containing an unspecified portion; and
identifying a plurality of matches for the query within the contexts.48. A method of generating an index for satisfying an information need from a
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48. A method of generating an index for satisfying an information need from a plurality of document stored on a computer-readable medium, comprising the steps of:
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receiving a document;
identifying a context in the document;
linguistically analyzing the context;
selecting a term from the document;
determining if there are more terms in the context to select, and if so, selecting another term from the context until there are no more terms to select;
determining if there are more contexts to identify in the document, and if so, identifying another context in the document and repeating the term selecting step for each term in the context until there are no more contexts to identify;
determining if there are more documents to receive, and if so, receiving the next document and repeating the context identifying and term selecting steps until there are no more documents to receive.
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57. An apparatus for fulfilling an information need employing an index stored on a computer-readable medium and comprised of preanalyzed contexts of terms appearing within a plurality of documents and information indicating category restrictions that the terms and contexts satisfy, comprising:
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memory means that stores computer-executable process steps; and
a processor that executes the process steps so as to (i)receive a query comprised of one or more fully specified terms and an information need, wherein the information need is represented by one or more at least partially unspecified terms reflecting a category restriction;
(ii) identify preanalyzed contexts in the index that contain the one or more fully specified terms and the one or more at least partially unspecified terms; and
(iii) locate one or matches for the information need within the identified preanalyzed contexts.
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58. An apparatus for fulfilling an information need employing an index stored on a computer-readable medium and comprised of preanalyzed contexts of terms appearing within a plurality of documents, information indicating category restrictions that the terms and contexts satisfy, and identifiers of the documents and contexts containing the terms, comprising:
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memory means that stores computer-executable process steps; and
a processor that executes the process steps so as to (i) receive a query comprised of one or more fully specified terms and an information need and at least a partial restriction on the order that the one or more fully specified terms and the information need may appear in a potential matching preanalyzed context, wherein the information need is represented by one or more at least partially unspecified terms reflecting a category restriction;
(ii) identify preanalyzed contexts in the index that contain the one or more fully specified terms and the one or more at least partially unspecified terms in the specified order; and
(iii) locate one or matches for the information need within the identified preanalyzed contexts.
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59. An apparatus for fulfilling an information need employing an index stored on a computer-readable medium and comprised of preanalyzed contexts of terms appearing within a plurality of documents, information indicating category restrictions that the terms and contexts satisfy, and identifiers of the documents and contexts containing the terms, comprising:
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memory means that stores computer-executable process steps; and
a processor that executes the process steps so as to (i) receive a query comprised of one or more fully specified terms and an information need and at least a partial restriction on the order that the one or more fully specified terms and the information need may appear in a potential matching preanalyzed context, wherein the information need is represented by one or more at least partially unspecified terms reflecting a category restriction;
(ii) identify preanalyzed contexts and documents in the index that contain the one or more fully specified terms and the one or more at least partially unspecified terms in the specified order by converting the query into a Boolean expression and identifying context identifiers satisfying the Boolean expression; and
(iii) locate one or matches for the information need within the identified preanalyzed contexts by converting the query into a finite state machine and matching the finite state machine against the identified preanalyzed contexts.
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60. Computer-executable process steps stored on a computer-readable medium, the computer-executable process steps to fulfill an information need, the computer-executable process steps comprising:
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code to receive a query containing an unspecified portion, the unspecified portion including an unspecified term; and
code to identify one or more matches for the query within a body of information stored on a computer-readable medium.
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61. Computer-executable process steps stored on a computer-readable medium, the computer-executable process steps to fulfill an information need, the computer-executable process steps comprising:
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code to store contexts for terms, wherein a context occurs in a document, code to store information identifying a document in which a context occurs;
code to receive a query containing an unspecified portion; and
code to identify one or more matches for the query within the contexts.
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62. Computer-executable process steps stored on a computer-readable medium, the computer-executable process steps to fulfill an information need, the computer-executable process steps comprising:
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code to identify a plurality of matches for a partially unspecified query; and
code to rank a plurality of the matches or portions thereof.
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63. Computer-executable process steps stored on a computer-readable medium, the computer-executable process steps to fulfill an information need, the computer-executable process steps comprising:
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code to identify a plurality of results for a query, the results occurring within documents; and
code to rank the plurality of results based on the content of a plurality of documents in which a result is identified.
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Specification