Selecting data sets using keywords suitable for searching

摘要

Methods and apparatus for identifying associated key words (1035) in a data set (1000). Associated key words are identified by a parser (1020), which firstly operates to extract key words from a data set (1000). These key words are then analysed by the parser (1020) to identify which key words, if any, have an association as determined by a predefined set of rules. These rules are grammatical and include, for example, two keywords both being nouns that occur one after the other without intervening low value words. A similar rule applies to nouns followed by verbs but does not extend to verbs followed by nouns. These rules allow terms and phrases such as "information technology" and "wide area network" to be identified as associated key words (1035) rather than as individual and unrelated key words.