Multi-faceted search

摘要

A facility for representing a set of items each potentially having a value for each of a group of attributes is described. The items are represented in a database made up of two or more discrete components. Each component corresponds to a proper subset of group of attributes, and represents for every item of the set the values of its proper subset of attributes. Every component is organized such that data items are represented within it in the same order.

主权项

1. A method in a computing system for processing a query against a set of items each having attributes of two or more of a plurality of attribute types, comprising:
for each of the plurality of attribute types, maintaining a data resource indicating values of attributes of the attribute type for the set of items, wherein the plurality of attribute types includes text data, geographic data, and relational data; receiving a query specifying values of attributes of at least two of the plurality of attribute types; for each of the plurality of attribute types for whose attributes the query specifies values, using the data resource maintained for the attribute type to generate a list of items of the set whose attribute values match the values specified by the query, such that the order of the items in the list generated from every data resource is consistent with the order of the items in the list generated from every other data source without any sorting; and intersecting the lists to obtain a query result in a single traversal of each of the lists.