Information retrieval from hierarchical compound documents
First Claim
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1. A method of searching for documents stored in a document repository, wherein documents contain searchable elements, the method comprising the steps of:
- manually organizing documents into a document hierarchy;
providing a search expression to a search engine, wherein the search expression is a logical function describing a set of searchable elements;
generating a list of at least one match from the results of the step of searching, where a match over multiple documents is expressed as a path in the hierarchy which links the multiple documents; and
outputting the list as a search result.
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Abstract
A search query is applied to documents in a document repository wherein the documents are organized into a hierarchy. A search engine searches the hierarchy to return documents which match a query term either directly or indirectly. A specific embodiment of the search engine organizes the query term into individual subterms and matches the subterms against documents, returning only those documents which indirectly match the entire search query term and directly match at least one of the query subterms.
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Citations
10 Claims
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1. A method of searching for documents stored in a document repository, wherein documents contain searchable elements, the method comprising the steps of:
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manually organizing documents into a document hierarchy;
providing a search expression to a search engine, wherein the search expression is a logical function describing a set of searchable elements;
generating a list of at least one match from the results of the step of searching, where a match over multiple documents is expressed as a path in the hierarchy which links the multiple documents; and
outputting the list as a search result. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
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5. A method of storing and searching hierarchical data, comprising the steps of:
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organizing data elements into a hierarchy, wherein the hierarchy has a tree structure such that each data element has a position in the hierarchy and has one or more ancestor data elements above the position or one or more descendant data elements below the position or both; and
applying a search expression to the hierarchy to identify data elements which match the search expression either directly or indirectly, wherein the search expression is matched directly when content of the data element alone matches the search expression and is matched indirectly when the data element does not match directly, but the content of the data element and at least one ancestor data element together match the search expression. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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Specification