Patent ID: 7110992

Claim:
A method of searching a collaborative document database, comprising the steps of: providing said database with a plurality of parent documents and a plurality of child documents, each of said child documents being related to at least one of the parent documents in said database; for each of the parent documents, combining said parent document and the child documents related to said parent document, into a master index document and storing the master index documents in an index document database separate from the collaborative document database, including i) taking selected field items from the parent document; ii) placing said selected field items as fields on the index document; iii) proceeding through the parent document and taking all text thereon and placing said all text from said parent document in said fields of the index document; and iv) proceeding through said related child documents, obtaining all text from each of said related child documents, and concatenating said all text from said related child documents to data in a search text block field of the index document; providing a search term; and searching all said index documents for said search term.