Patent Document ID: 7756857
Application ID: 10461483

Base Claim:
1. A method of querying one or more structured documents with an original query, the method comprising the steps of: providing a list of indexing components of the structured documents to be queried wherein said indexing components comprise at least markup tags; parsing at least one schema of the structured documents to determine predefined deterministic relationships between the indexing components; removing from the list those indexing components whose occurrences can be inferred, using said determined predefined deterministic relationships, from occurrences of another indexing component, to provide a reduced list of indexing components; indexing said structured documents by generating indices using said reduced list of indexing components, wherein the generated indices point to occurrences of the indexing components included in the reduced list of indexing components within the structured documents; generating a mapping list that maps the removed indexing components to indexing components in the reduced list of indexing components used to generate the indices; reformulating an original query by substituting references to one or more removed indexing components in the original query with references to indexing components in said reduced list of indexing components, using the generated mapping list; querying said one or more structured documents by using said generated indices and said reformulated query to provide one or more sets of intermediate results; and performing post-retrieval processing on the one or more sets of intermediate results to form a final result of said original query, wherein said post-retrieval processing comprises the sub-steps of: locating the removed indexing components existing in the one or more sets of intermediate results; and generating the final result set to satisfy the original query using the located removed indexing components.

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Claim 5:
5. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the locating sub-step further comprises scanning the one or more sets of intermediate results to locate any of the substituted indexing components existing in the one or more sets of intermediate results.