Patent ID: 8346759

Claim:
A system in communication, comprising: a processor; and a computer readable storage medium including code executed by the processor to perform operations, the operations comprising: accessing document identifiers for documents, wherein the documents include at least one value that is a member of a set of values; generating a number of posting lists, wherein each posting list is associated with a range of consecutive values within the set of values and includes document identifiers for documents including at least one value within the range of consecutive values associated with the posting list, and wherein each document identifier is associated with one value in the set of values included in the document identified by the document identifier; storing the generated posting lists, wherein the posting lists are used to process a query on a range of values within the set of values; receiving a query on a query range of values within the set of values; determining a minimum number of posting lists associated with consecutive values that together include the query range of values; merging the determined posting lists to form a merged posting list including document identifiers of documents including values within the query range; and returning the document identifiers in the merged posting list.