Patent ID: 8356028

Claim:
A property-based document system comprising: a computer including a computer readable medium and a processor, operating thereon, for storing and retrieving information; a flexible data model permitting a user to provide information which includes a plurality of statements and one or more optional properties, wherein when the user provides the information the system is adapted to obtain, from the information, and store, in a first table, the plurality of statements, wherein each statement includes an identification tag and comprises one or more property value pairs, and wherein each statement includes document properties, obtain, from the information, and store, in a second table, the one or more optional properties which each augment one of the plurality of statements, wherein the first table and the second table are stored separately within the flexible data model, wherein each optional property identifies its associated statement using that statement's identification tag, and wherein the one or more optional properties include one or more embellishments which provide additional information related to its associated statement, and one or more qualifications which define a circumstance and limit its associated statement to apply in that circumstance, and associate statements stored in the first table with optional properties stored in the second table using each statement's identification tag; wherein the one or more optional properties include one or more relations between a set of circumstances and a property value domain, wherein the property value domain is a hierarchy; and wherein when a query is received at the system, the system determines a response to the query, wherein the response includes a particular statement from the first table, and wherein the particular statement includes information explicitly requested in the query, determines that a particular optional property stored in the second table is associated with the particular statement in the flexible data model using the particular statement's identification tag, wherein the particular optional property includes information relevant to the particular statement, and wherein the information included in the particular optional property was not explicitly requested in the query, retrieves the particular statement from the first table and the particular optional property associated with the particular statement from the second table, and augments the particular statement in the response with the particular optional property associated with the particular statement to create an augmented response, and returns the augmented response to the user including the particular statement augmented with the particular optional property associated with the particular statement.