Patent ID: 7836085

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: identifying, in a computer, a plurality of structured documents and exogenous metadata for each structured document, the structured documents having a same structured data format, wherein the structured documents are received from one or more data sources and the exogenous metadata for each structure document is received from one or more data sources different from the one or more data sources from which the structured document was received, wherein the same structured data format is a Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format, and wherein each of the structured documents is a KML document that associates each of one or more locations on the surface of the earth with one or more of respective text, a respective model, or a respective image; parsing each structured document in the plurality of structured documents and extracting a plurality of data sets from each structured document; associating the exogenous metadata for each structured document with each data set extracted from the structured document; adding a plurality of record items to a searchable database, wherein a structure of the record items corresponds to the same structured data format of the structured documents, wherein each record item corresponds to one of the extracted data sets, and wherein each record item includes the exogenous metadata associated with the corresponding data set; receiving a search query; using the exogenous metadata associated with each of one or more of the record items to identify at least one record item in the searchable database; and returning the identified at least one record item in response to the search query.