Method for Suggesting Web Links and Alternate Terms for Matching Search Queries

• US 20070208714A1
• Filed: 02/28/2007
• Published: 09/06/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Krishnaprasad, Muralidhar, Krishnamurthy, Vishu, Ture, Mark
• Granted Patent: US 8,868,540 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3322 using system suggestions G06F16/3325 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6227 where protection concerns the structure of data, e.g. records, types, queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2141 Access rights, e.g. capability lists, access control lists, access tables, access matrices
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0815 providing single-sign-on or federations

Abstract

A flexible and extensible architecture allows for secure searching across an enterprise. Such an architecture can provide a simple Internet-like search experience to users searching secure content inside (and outside) the enterprise. The architecture allows for the crawling and searching of a variety or sources across an enterprise, regardless of whether any of these sources conform to a conventional user role model. The architecture further allows for security attributes to be submitted at query time, for example, in order to provide real-time secure access to enterprise resources. The user query also can be transformed to provide for dynamic querying that provides for a more current result list than can be obtained for static queries.

Claims

1. A method of suggesting links and alternate terms for a search query, comprising:

defining a rule index for a secure source operable to be queried by a user;

tokenizing a query string received from a user to generate a set of query tokens;

applying the rules index to variations of the set of query tokens in order to match the query string with at least one of related links and alternate terms; and

selecting at least one subset of the related links and alternate terms to display to a user along with results for the query string.

2. A method according to claim 1, further comprising:

mapping rule patterns of the rule index with at least one of links and alternate terms in order to determine a match for the set of query tokens.

3. A method according to claim 2, wherein:

the rule patterns include operators selected from the group consisting of AND, OR, PHRASE, and STEM operators.

4. A method according to claim 1, wherein:

selecting at least one subset includes scoring the related links and alternate terms.

5. A method according to claim 1, wherein:

applying the rules index to variations of the set of query tokens in order to match the query string includes matching based on at least one of synonyms, uni-grams, bi-grams, tri-grams, and quoted phrases.

6. A method according to claim 1, wherein:

applying the rules index to variations of the set of query tokens in order to match the query string includes variation matching based on at least one of iterative term replacement, nesting, space ignoring, space adding, analysis of word boundaries, and case sensitive matching.

7. A computer program product embedded in a computer readable medium for suggesting links and alternate terms for a search query, comprising:

program code for defining a rule index for a secure source operable to be queried by a user;

program code for tokenizing a query string received from a user to generate a set of query tokens;

program code for applying the rules index to variations of the set of query tokens in order to match the query string with at least one of related links and alternate terms; and

program code for selecting at least one subset of the related links and alternate terms to display to a user along with results for the query string.

8. A computer program product according to claim 7, further comprising:

program code for mapping rule patterns of the rule index with at least one of links and alternate terms in order to determine a match for the set of query tokens.

9. A computer program product according to claim 8, wherein:

the rule patterns include operators selected from the group consisting of AND, OR, PHRASE, and STEM operators.

10. A computer program product according to claim 7, wherein:

program code for selecting at least one subset includes program code for scoring the related links and alternate terms.

11. A computer program product according to claim 7, wherein:

program code for applying the rules index to variations of the set of query tokens in order to match the query string includes program code for matching based on at least one of synonyms, uni-grams, bi-grams, tri-grams, and quoted phrases.

12. A computer program product according to claim 7, wherein:

program code for applying the rules index to variations of the set of query tokens in order to match the query string includes program code for variation matching based on at least one of iterative term replacement, nesting, space ignoring, space adding, analysis of word boundaries, and case sensitive matching.