Patent Document ID: 8903829
Application ID: 13161700

Base Claim:
1. A method for indexing a structured document, the method comprising: providing, in a database management system configured to store structured documents in their native format, a multi-path index definition associated with a data model corresponding to a structured document, the multi-path index definition including a first sub-path definition that covers a first plurality of descendant elements of a root element of the data model and a second sub-path definition that covers a second plurality of descendant elements of the root element of the data model, the multi-path index definition further including at least two index properties from a set of index properties that specifies a type of search to be performed for the content of each of the descendant elements covered by the sub-path definitions, the set of index properties including at least a full-text search, a value comparison, an element type definition, an enumerate repeating elements, and a start end marker; receiving, by an indexing engine in the database management system, a first path expression representing a first descendant element of one of the first plurality of descendant elements or the second plurality of descendant elements from a first structured document received by the database management system; determining, by the indexing engine in the database management system, that the first descendant element is covered by one of the first sub-path definition based on the first path expression or the second sub-path definition based on the first path expression; indexing, by the indexing engine, the first descendant element according to the at least two index properties to generate a path-value pair comprising the first path expression and a value associated with the first descendant element; and storing, by the indexing engine, the path-value pair and a reference to the first structured document in a record in an inverted multi-path index associated with the multi-path index definition.

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Claim 9:
9. The method of claim 1 wherein the database management system is an extensible markup language (XML) database management system and the first structured document is an XML document.