Patent Document ID: 8666974
Application ID: 13087210

Base Claim:
1. A method comprising: receiving a query directed to a search; analyzing the query to select a characteristic of the query that limits the number of records that the query can retrieve from a database; determining whether the selected query characteristic complies with a search criterion of a plurality of search criteria, each of the plurality of search criteria corresponding to a predefined search index, each predefined search index being drawn from a database and containing identifiers for records of items in the database; selecting a predefined search index corresponding to the selected query characteristic; applying the search criterion for the selected query characteristic to the selected predefined search index; selecting items subject to a collection limit based on applying the search criterion to the selected predefined search index, the collection limit limiting the total number of items that are selected; post-filtering the selected items against the database using search criteria of the received query other than the search criterion of the selected query characteristic; and returning a result set for the query, the result set including only items returned from the post-filtering.

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Claim 18:
18. The method of claim 1 , wherein the received query is received from a user, the method further comprising: determining a user access privilege level for the query, each user access privilege level allowing access to different sets of items of the database; selecting one of a plurality of privilege level search indexes, each privilege level search index corresponding to a user access privilege level of the database, the selected privilege level search index containing only items corresponding to the determined user access privilege level; and applying the search to the selected privilege level search index, wherein returning a result set for the query comprises returning a result set including only items of the selected privilege level search index.