SEARCHING DOCUMENT SETS WITH DIFFERING METADATA SCHEMATA

• US 20080281781A1
• Filed: 05/07/2007
• Published: 11/13/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/07/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Zhao, Lei, Fang, Lijiang, Krishnamoorthy, Prakash Sundra, Critchlow, Richard
• Granted Patent: US 7,711,729 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/38 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

Search and filtering of documents with different metadata schemata is enabled using a single index that supports a single schema through decorated namespaces. Each metadata schema submitted to a system is assigned a unique identifier and property names associated with the schema are prefixed with the unique identifier. A single-valued, decorated property is used to indicate whether a submitted document is part of a registered schema in the system. The single-valued properties are converted to a search index table that enables resource-optimized searching and filtering of documents eliminating documents of other schemata by simply checking the association property.

Claims

1. A method to be executed at least in part in a computing device for searching documents with differing metadata schemata, the method comprising:

receiving a customer defined metadata schema;

assigning a unique identifier to the schema;

generating an association property that indicates whether a document is associated with the schema;

storing the association property in a search index;

in response to receiving a document associated with the schema, modifying the association property to indicate that the document is associated with the schema; and

in response to receiving a request for a search query, performing the search using the search index by filtering the entries based on their association properties.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

prefixing names of properties associated with the schema with the unique Identifier.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein a name of the association property is also prefixed with the unique identifier.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the association property is a single-value property.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein modifying the association property includes setting a value of the association property to “

true”

for the document associated with the schema.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

registering the customer defined schema.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the query request is received from a user associated with the customer.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

filtering search results based on a credential of the requesting user.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

filtering search parameters in the query based a credential of the requesting user by eliminating schemas to which the user does not have sufficient permission from the search list.

10. A system for searching documents with differing metadata schemata, the system comprising:

a memory;

a processor coupled to the memory, wherein the processor is configured to;

receive a customer defined metadata schema;

assign a unique identifier to the schema;

in response to receiving a document associated with the schema, generate an association property indicating that the received document is associated with the schema;

store the association property in a search index;

in response to receiving a request for a search query from a user associated with the customer, perform the search using the search index by filtering the entries based on their association properties; and

providing the results of the search to the user.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the search index further includes core properties for each document.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein a name of the association property includes the unique identifier.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the processor is further configured to modify names of all properties associated with the received document to include the unique identifier.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein the processor is further configured to enable the user to search based on schemas of other customers based on the user'"'"'s credentials.

15. The system of claim 10, wherein the association property is a single-value property.

16. The system of claim 10, further comprising:

a metadata store for storing metadata schemas; and

a document store for storing documents received from customers.

17. A computer-readable storage medium with instructions encoded thereon for searching documents with differing metadata schemata, the instructions comprising:

receiving custom metadata schema;

assigning a unique identifier to the schema;

in response to receiving a document associated with the schema, generating a single-value association property indicating that the received document is associated with the schema, wherein a name of the association property includes the unique identifier;

storing the association property in a search index along with core properties for documents associated with the search index;

in response to receiving a request for a search, performing the search using the search index by filtering the documents based on their association properties.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein a value of the association property is set to “

true”

for a document associated with the schema and to “

false”

for a document not associated with the schema.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein filtering the documents includes eliminating documents with association property values of “

false”

from the search.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the instructions further comprise:

enabling a query for performing the search to define a plurality of schemas to be included in the search.