Patent ID: 8224870

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of indexing a collection of objects, each object having one or more object names that each having one or more name prefixes, each object having an associated score, and each object further having an address, the method comprising: maintaining a plurality of prefix indices, each distinct prefix index corresponding to a distinct name prefix, all distinct name prefixes that exist for the object names in the collection having a corresponding prefix index, each prefix index being limited to indexing no more than K objects, wherein K is a predetermined constant; and indexing in each prefix index no more than K objects, each object having an object name with a name prefix that is the same as a name prefix corresponding to the prefix index, wherein each index entry identifying an object includes the score of the object and the address of the object, and wherein each object in each prefix index is one of K top-scoring objects having a name prefix corresponding to the prefix index.