Method and framework to support indexing and searching taxonomies in large scale full text indexes

• US 20070078880A1
• Filed: 09/30/2005
• Published: 04/05/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Tomkins, Andrew, Meyer, Joerg, Meredith, Daniel, Eiron, Nadav, Pieper, Jan
• Granted Patent: US 8,600,997 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/367 Ontology

Abstract

A system and method of indexing a plurality of entities located in a taxonomy, the entities comprising sets of terms, comprises receiving terms in an index structure; building a posting list for an entity with respect to the locations of the set of terms defining the entity and data associated with the respective terms; and indexing a name of a group comprising the entities within this group at the location of the entities with the data of the group comprising the name of the respective entity at each location. The building of the posting list comprises storing the location of the term and data associated with the term in an entry in the posting list for the term. The method comprises indexing aliases of the name of the group comprising the term, and using an inverted list index to associate data with each occurrence of an index term.

Claims

1. A method of indexing a plurality of entities located in a taxonomy, said entities comprising sets of terms, said method comprising:

receiving said sets of terms in an index structure;

building a posting list for an entity with respect to locations of said sets of terms and data associated with said sets of terms; and

indexing a name of a group comprising said entity at said locations of said sets of terms with data of said group comprising the name of said entity.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the building of the posting list comprises storing said location of said entity and data associated with said entity in an entry in said posting list for said entity

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising using an inverted list index to associate data with each occurrence of an index term.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising searching said inverted list index to allow statistical aggregation across a set of document hits, wherein said statistical aggregation indicates which individual entities exist in a document set.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising extracting datafields of all occurrences of a term with each document found by an indexer.

6. A program storage device readable by computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by said computer to perform a method of indexing a plurality of entities located in a taxonomy, said entities comprising sets of terms, said method comprising:

receiving said sets of terms in an index structure;

building a posting list for an entity with respect to locations of said sets of terms and data associated with said sets of terms; and

indexing a name of a group comprising said entity at said locations of said sets of terms with data of said group comprising the name of said entity.

7. The program storage device of claim 6, wherein the building of the posting list comprises storing said location of said entity and data associated with said entity in an entry in said posting list for said entity.

8. The program storage device of claim 6, wherein said method further comprises using an inverted list index to associate data with each occurrence of an index term.

9. The program storage device of claim 8, wherein said method further comprises searching said inverted list index to allow statistical aggregation across a set of document hits, wherein said statistical aggregation indicates which individual entities exist in a document set.

10. The program storage device of claim 6, wherein said method further comprises extracting datafields of all occurrences of a term with each document found by an indexer.

11. A system of indexing a plurality of entities located in a taxonomy, said entities comprising sets of terms, said system comprising:

an index structure adapted to receive terms; and

a plurality of posting lists comprising entities with respect to locations of said terms and data associated with said terms,

wherein said index structure comprises a name of a group comprising said locations of said entities within the group with data of said group comprising the name of said entities.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein said posting list is adapted to store said location of the term and data associated with said term in an entry in said posting list for said term.

13. The system of claim 11, further comprising an inverted list index structure adapted to associate data with each occurrence of an index term.

14. The system of claim 13, further comprising a query mechanism adapted to search said inverted list index structure to allow statistical aggregation across a set of document hits, wherein said statistical aggregation indicates which individual entities exist in a document set.

15. The system of claim 11, further comprising an indexer adapted to extract datafields of all occurrences of a term with each document found by said indexer.