Patent ID: 8005817

Claim:
A method of computing score of candidate answers to a database query, the method comprising: receiving the database query; converting the database query to a binary predicate query; assigning a first score to a match to the binary predicate query, the database query organized as a node labeled tree and the first score being associated with a relative importance of an individual keyword in a collection of documents, each document in the collection of documents organized as the node labeled tree, based on all structural and content predicates in the database query, wherein assigning the first score captures all the structure and content predicates in the database query by applying an edge relaxation, a leaf deletion relaxation and a subtree promotion relaxation to the node labeled tree of the database query; assigning a second score to the match, the second score being associated with a relative importance of a keyword in an individual document in the collection of documents; and computing an answer score for the database query based on the first score and second score.