Patent ID: 7685136

Claim:
A computer implemented method of managing document summary information, the method comprising: obtaining, on a computer device, a collation order based on a set of attributes for a plurality of documents; for each of the plurality of documents, obtaining summary information for the document, using the computer device, wherein the summary information includes a value for each of the set of attributes and rendering information for displaying a summary of the document; creating a document entry based on the summary information, wherein the document entry includes a unique identifier for the document and the summary information; and storing the document entry in a summary table in a relational database; and generating an index for the summary table based on the collation order, using the computer device, wherein the index includes the unique identifier, the set of attributes values, and rendering information for the document entry in the summary table for each of the plurality of documents; receiving a rendering request; determining a corresponding collation order for the rendering request; selecting an appropriate index for the summary table based on the corresponding collation order; generating a rendering response using a query that uses index-only access of the appropriate index for the summary table; obtaining a second collation order based on the set of attributes; generating a second index for the summary table based on the second collation order; and generating a set of categories for the collation order, wherein the set of categories defines a hierarchical structure for displaying the document summary information, and wherein each of the plurality of documents is located under at least one category, wherein the generating the set of categories step includes automatically generating a plurality of new categories based on a category that includes a number of child hierarchical locations that exceeds a maximum distribution value.