Patent ID: 8745078

Claim:
A file search method, the method comprising: receiving an initial query expression from a client computer; dividing the initial query expression into one or more keywords by comparing the initial query expression with a plurality of related terms in a related term dictionary using a longest-term match rule, and obtaining one or more matched terms, the matched terms representing the one or more keywords, the longest-term match rule being executed by obtaining a first term from the initial query expression, determining a first matched term by comparing the initial query expression with specified related terms of the first term, obtaining a residual part of the initial query expression by removing the first matched term from the initial query expression, obtaining a next term from the residual part of the initial query expression, determining a second matched term by comparing the residual part of the initial query expression with specified related terms of the next term, and repeating the longest-term match rule until the initial query expression is null; determining expanded terms corresponding to each of the keywords; merging the keywords and the expanded terms to obtain an updated query expression; performing a search operation according to the updated query expression, and obtaining search results from a data source, the search results comprising a plurality of documents matched with the updated query expression; calculating a relevance score between each document in the search results and the updated query expression, ranking the documents in the search results according to the relevance score, and displaying the documents with the ranking order on a display device of the client computer.