Patent ID: 7174328

Claim:
A method for processing queries of hierarchical tagged data using hints, said hints being navigational aids and said processing being performed on a computing device, the method comprising: providing a plurality of hints for the hierarchical tagged data, said data having a plurality of nodes l and c such that l is a parent of c; pruning the hierarchical tagged data using said plurality of hints to avoid unnecessary navigation when processing said queries; updating said hints in accordance with required navigation workload and updates and changes to the hierarchical tagged data; providing a usefulness matrix for calculating a usefulness of each of said hints, wherein for a pre-defined parameter 0â‰¦Î±â‰¦1, the usefulness of the hint is calculated as Usf h(l, c, t) =(1+Î±Ã—semW h(l, c, t) )Ã— s Usf h(l, c, t) , where semW h (l, C, l) is a semantic weight and sUsf h(l, c, t) is a structural usefulness of the hint; selecting hints according to limitations on an allocated memory size of said computing device and the usefulness of the hint; and storing the selected hints for querying processing.