Patent ID: 7756858

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for searching a document store of electronically stored structured documents and for generating a result for a query of the document store for one or more document of elements, using pre-computed step queries and pre-computed step query results stored in a computer-readable database, using a processor configured to access the computer-readable database, the method comprising: using the processor, receiving the query, wherein the query is a computer-readable data sequence representing a path of elements in the document of elements; using the processor, generating a plurality of step queries from the query, wherein a step query comprises a relationship between a plurality of elements determined from a part of the path of elements; using the processor, for each of the plurality of step queries, accessing the computer-readable database and retrieving a pre-computed step query result for a step query in the plurality of step queries by querying the computer-readable database using the step query as a query to a query engine, wherein the step query corresponds to a pre-computed step query for the pre-computed step query result; and using the processor, generating the result for the query using the step query results.