SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SUBSET SEARCHING AND ASSOCIATED SEARCH OPERATORS

• US 20170124162A1
• Filed: 10/21/2016
• Published: 05/04/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/28/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Open Text Sa Ulc (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Open Text Sa Ulc (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Pidduck, Patrick Thomas Sidney, Tausky, David Alan
• Granted Patent: US 10,691,709 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2246 Trees, e.g. B+trees
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results

Abstract

Embodiments as disclosed may provide a search operator that addresses the problem of query construction for finding objects that include some number (N) of a set of terms (M). Moreover, embodiments as disclosed herein may efficiently implement the searches specified by such subset operators using a subset process that combines results from a set of term processes where only one term process may be needed for each search term (or search term variant).

Claims

1. A search system, comprising:

a processor;

a data store, having a corpus and an index of the corpus stored thereon, the corpus comprising a set of objects, each object associated with a corresponding identifier;

a computer readable medium, having instructions for;

receiving a search query having a subset operator, the subset operator including a threshold and a set of search terms;

generating a search tree for the subset operator, the search tree having a subset operator node including a subset process configured according to the threshold, wherein the subset operator node has, for each search term, a sub-node comprising a term process corresponding to that search term;

executing the search tree using the index to determine one or more objects of the corpus that satisfy the subset operator, wherein executing the search tree comprises receiving a result from each of the term processes at the subset process and evaluating the result from each of the term processes by the subset process to determine if an object has a number of the set of terms equal to or greater than the threshold; and

returning the identifiers for the one or more objects of the corpus that satisfy the subset operator.

2. The search system of claim 1, wherein each of the term processes is an iterator configured to evaluate the documents of the corpus according to an order of the identifiers of the objects and the result is an identifier of the next object containing the search term associated with the term process according to the order.

3. The search system of claim 2, wherein the identifiers are numerical and the order of the identifiers is sequentially from lowest to highest.

4. The search system of claim 3, wherein the subset process is configured to call each of the term processes to determine the result for that term process.

5. The search system of claim 4, wherein evaluating the result from each of the term processes by the subset process comprises determining if a number of results from each of the term processes with a minimum value is equal to, or exceeds, the threshold and if so, adding the object associated with the identifier to the one or more objects that satisfy the subset operator.

6. The search system of claim 5, wherein the subset process obtains a next result from each term process whose result is the minimum value of all the results returned by the term processes.

7. The search system of claim 1, wherein the threshold is specified as a number value or a percentage value.

8. A non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising instructions for:

storing a corpus and an index of the corpus in a data store, the corpus comprising a set of objects, each object associated with a corresponding identifier;

receiving a search query having a subset operator, the subset operator including a threshold and a set of search terms;

generating a search tree for the subset operator, the search tree having a subset operator node including a subset process configured according to the threshold, wherein the subset operator node has, for each search term, a sub-node comprising a term process corresponding to that search term;

executing the search tree using the index to determine one or more objects of the corpus that satisfy the subset operator, wherein executing the search tree comprises receiving a result from each of the term processes at the subset process and evaluating the result from each of the term processes by the subset process to determine if an object has a number of the set of terms equal to or greater than the threshold; and

returning the identifiers for the one or more objects of the corpus that satisfy the subset operator.

9. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein each of the term processes is an iterator configured to evaluate the documents of the corpus according to an order of the identifiers of the objects and the result is an identifier of the next object containing the search term associated with the term process according to the order.

10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 9, wherein the identifiers are numerical and the order of the identifiers is sequentially from lowest to highest.

11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10, wherein the subset process is configured to call each of the term processes to determine the result for that term process.

12. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11, wherein evaluating the result from each of the term processes by the subset process comprises determining if a number of results from each of the term processes with a minimum value is equal to, or exceeds, the threshold and if so, adding the object associated with the identifier to the one or more objects that satisfy the subset operator.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the subset process obtains a next result from each term process whose result is the minimum value of all the results returned by the term processes.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein the threshold is specified as a number value or a percentage value.

16. The method of claim 8, wherein each of the term processes is an iterator configured to evaluate the documents of the corpus according to an order of the identifiers of the objects and the result is an identifier of the next object containing the search term associated with the term process according to the order.

17. The method of claim 9, wherein the identifiers are numerical and the order of the identifiers is sequentially from lowest to highest.

18. The method of claim 10, wherein the subset process is configured to call each of the term processes to determine the result for that term process.

19. The method of claim 11, wherein evaluating the result from each of the term processes by the subset process comprises determining if a number of results from each of the term processes with a minimum value is equal to, or exceeds, the threshold and if so, adding the object associated with the identifier to the one or more objects that satisfy the subset operator.

20. The method of claim 12, wherein the subset process obtains a next result from each term process whose result is the minimum value of all the results returned by the term processes.

21. The method of claim 8, wherein the threshold is specified as a number value or a percentage value.

15. A method for implementing a subset search on a search system, comprising:

storing a corpus and an index of the corpus in a data store, the corpus comprising a set of objects, each object associated with a corresponding identifier;

receiving a search query having a subset operator, the subset operator including a threshold and a set of search terms;

generating a search tree for the subset operator, the search tree having a subset operator node including a subset process configured according to the threshold, wherein the subset operator node has, for each search term, a sub-node comprising a term process corresponding to that search term;

executing the search tree using the index to determine one or more objects of the corpus that satisfy the subset operator, wherein executing the search tree comprises receiving a result from each of the term processes at the subset process and evaluating the result from each of the term processes by the subset process to determine if an object has a number of the set of terms equal to or greater than the threshold; and

returning the identifiers for the one or more objects of the corpus that satisfy the subset operator.