METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR INDEXING REFERENCES TO DOCUMENTS OF A DATABASE AND FOR LOCATING DOCUMENTS IN THE DATABASE

摘要

Methods and systems allow indexing references to documents of a database according to database reference profiles. Documents may then be located in the database using decoding protocols based on the database reference profiles. To this end, the documents are stored in the database and searchable terms extracted therefrom are associated with posting lists. Each posting list is divided into blocks of M database references. The blocks are encoded according to a pattern that depends on the M database references. A corresponding pointer to a table of encoding patterns is appended to each block. When a query is received for a searchable term, blocks are extracted from a posting list corresponding to the searchable term and a pointer for each block is used to extract a decoding protocol related to an encoding pattern for the block.

主权项

1. A method for locating documents of a database that contain search terms, the method comprising:
receiving a search term, at the database, from a client, the search term being associated with a posting list, the posting list being arranged in blocks, each block comprising a header and M truncated references, each block having been compressed into a compressed block by encoding content of each block using an encoding pattern, the encoding pattern for each block having been determined based on values of the M truncated references in each block; reading a pointer from a header of a current block of the posting list; using the pointer to extract a decoding protocol from a decoding protocol table, wherein the decoding protocol defines the encoding pattern for the current block.