Patent ID: 8312016

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having embodied therein software configured to implement a method of finding service documents stored in a database that match a request XML document, the XML document containing a plurality of XML nodes the method comprising the steps of: forming a Path and Parent Associated Node (PPAN) element for each XML node in the request XML document, each PPAN element being a data structure containing path level of a current node in the request XML document, a name and value pair associated with the current element, and a name and value pair of a parent element of the current element, the PPAN element not containing additional information about the structure of the XML document other than the path level of the current node and the parent child relationship of the current node and its parent node; using the PPAN elements from the request XML document to identify a subset of service documents that contain data and structure that match the PPAN elements.