Method and apparatus for storing and retrieving data using ontologies
First Claim
1. A method of searching through a plurality of stored documents, the method comprising:
- storing the plurality of documents;
storing a representation of an ontology, the ontology comprising a plurality of inter-related nodes and being divided into at least two distinct sub-spaces;
for each of the plurality of documents, storing at least one association with a node of a first distinct sub-space of the ontology and at least one association with a node of a second distinct sub-space of the ontology;
controlling a user interface to permit a user to input up to at least two search terms using free text entry and to associate the or each search term with a respective distinct sub-space of the ontology;
comparing the or each input search term with nodes of the corresponding sub-space only, in order to attempt to determine one or more possible matches or partial matches; and
selecting one or more of the stored documents based on the or each possibly matched or partially matched node and the stored associations between the stored documents and the nodes of the ontology for presentation to the user.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method of storing service description documents in a computerised storage system in which each document is associated with at least one verb ontological node (204) and at least one noun ontological node (254), each verb ontological node having one or more links to other verb ontological nodes and each noun ontological node having one or more links to other noun ontological nodes whereby the verb nodes form a verb space (200) and the noun nodes form a noun space (250) and a method of retrieving service description documents from a plurality of service description documents stored in this way comprising the steps of: controlling a user interface to request from a user at least one verb request term (405) and at least one noun request term (410), associating the or each verb request term (405) with a corresponding verb node (204) and the or each noun request term (410) with a corresponding noun node (254), comparing the or each corresponding verb node (204) with the or each verb node (212, 214) associated with each of the stored service description documents, comparing the or each corresponding noun node (254) with the or each noun node (262, 266) associated with each of the stored service description documents, and selecting for retrieval zero or more of the stored service description documents on the basis of the comparison steps and controlling the user interface to inform the user of the selected documents to enable the user to retrieve one or more of the selected documents.
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Citations
13 Claims
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1. A method of searching through a plurality of stored documents, the method comprising:
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storing the plurality of documents;
storing a representation of an ontology, the ontology comprising a plurality of inter-related nodes and being divided into at least two distinct sub-spaces;
for each of the plurality of documents, storing at least one association with a node of a first distinct sub-space of the ontology and at least one association with a node of a second distinct sub-space of the ontology;
controlling a user interface to permit a user to input up to at least two search terms using free text entry and to associate the or each search term with a respective distinct sub-space of the ontology;
comparing the or each input search term with nodes of the corresponding sub-space only, in order to attempt to determine one or more possible matches or partial matches; and
selecting one or more of the stored documents based on the or each possibly matched or partially matched node and the stored associations between the stored documents and the nodes of the ontology for presentation to the user. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13)
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2. A method of storing a plurality of electronic documents comprising:
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generating in respect of each electronic document at least one association with a node of a first type of node and at least one association with a node of a second type of node, the nodes belonging to a predetermined ontology which has the property that a sub-tree of a node of a given type contains only nodes of that same given type; and
storing the pair or group of associations generated in respect of a particular document in addition to the document in a digital memory in such a way that the associations can be readily linked to the corresponding document. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 11)
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9. Apparatus for storing and retrieving electronic documents comprising:
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an electronic data store comprising means for storing a plurality of electronic documents;
further electronic data storage means for storing a pair or group of associations associating each electronic document with at least one node of a first type and at least one node of a second type of a predetermined ontology;
request generation means for generating a search request comprising a first term and a second term;
translation means for generating a translated search request or requests by comparing the first term of a search request with nodes of the first type and comparing the second term of the search request with nodes of the second type to find specific nodes which correspond to the terms of the search request; and
comparison means for comparing the or each translated search request with each stored pair or group of associations and selecting those documents for which a sufficiently close match is determined. - View Dependent Claims (10)
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Specification