Patent ID: 7657424

Claim:
An electronic query response system, comprising: a first software routine configured on a client device to form a text string from text words associated with a user query; a server system coupled to the client device through an Internet protocol based communications channel; a first database coupled to the server system that stores responsive answer data items which can be presented in response to the user query; a second software routine executing on the server system, the second software routine being configured to generate database queries to the first database based on the text string, and to cause the first database to retrieve and identify candidate sets of responsive answer data items for the database queries; and a third software routine executing on the server system, the third software routine being configured (1) to generate a first list of word phrases from the text string, (2) to pass the first list of word phrases to the second software routine such that the second software routine combines the first list of word phrases with the text string using one or more search predicates, makes a single combined database query to the first database, and identifies a first candidate set of responsive answer data items as a result of the combined database query, (3) to compare the first list of word phrases with second lists of word phrases identified in each of the first candidate set of responsive answer data items, and (4) to determine, based on the comparison of the first and second lists of word phrases, which of the first candidate set of responsive answer data items is the best match for the user query, such that the best match may be communicated to the client device.