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US6278990A · kind A · utility

24Cited by
28References
4Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateJul 25, 1997
Grant dateAug 21, 2001
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 25, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
  • CPC primaryY10S707/99943
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

The present invention is a method for operating a computer system to retrieve information from a computer database. This method decomposes documents from the database into subdocuments and then inverts the database. Also, a query for retrieving documents from a database is decomposed into terms. The subdocuments from the inverted database and the terms from the query are then used to compute a score that indicates a quantitative relation between terms in the query and the subdocuments. The resulting list of the subdocuments and their scores is then reorganized into a heap form. The highest ranking subdocument is then selected by the computer and the text associated with this subdocument is displayed. The remainder of the subdocument score list is concurrently reheapified.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.