Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-11
2004-09-07
Robinson, Greta (Department: 2177)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06789076
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to networks of computational devices, and more particularly to enhancement of identification of relevant information accessible using such a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following descriptions and examples are not admitted to be prior art by virtue of their inclusion within this section.
The continuing proliferation of powerful, convenient computational devices has been accompanied by an increase in the use of networks connecting these devices. Computational devices include computers and other, often portable, devices such as wireless telephones, personal digital assistants, and automobile-based computers. Such portable computational devices are also sometimes termed “pervasive devices”. “Computer”, as used herein, may refer to any of such computational devices. The networks connecting computational devices may be “wired” networks, formed using “land lines” such as copper wire or fiber optic cable, wireless networks employing earth and/or satellite-based wireless transmission links, or combinations of wired and wireless network portions. Many networks are organized using a client/server architecture, in which “server” computational devices manage resources, such as files, peripheral devices or processing power, which may be requested by “client” computational devices. The client device is often operated by a user of the network. Computational devices not operated directly by a user, such as “proxy servers” which act on behalf of other machines, may act as either clients or servers.
Currently a very widely used network is the Internet, a global network of computational devices which communicate using a set of protocols called TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/Internet protocol). An especially popular aspect of the Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW, or “web”), a collection of interlinked documents formatted in hypertext markup language (HTML). These documents, or “web pages”, may incorporate text, graphics, audio, and/or video content, and may include convenient links to one another, often called “hyperlinks” or simply “links”. Documents or files are requested by client computers through an application program called a web browser. The files are requested from server computers, or “web servers”. The transmission of the files over the web uses an additional Internet protocol called hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).
An important feature of the Internet is that it is substantially free of central organization. A server hosting, for example, web pages can be connected to the Internet easily and at relatively low cost. Although this decentralization allows extremely wide access, and an ever-increasing variety and availability of information, identifying and locating specific pieces of information (or, e.g., information on a specific topic) can be extremely difficult. For this reason, various database systems, including search engines and directories, have been developed to aid users in finding specific types of information. These database systems typically contain an entry for each web page (or other file or document) included in the database, so that the database can be searched relatively quickly without the need to retrieve actual web pages in order to perform a search. An entry may include, for example, a network address of the page (typically a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL) along with one or more keywords associated with the page content and possibly a brief summary of the page content. Although “search engine” is often used to describe any such database system, a “search engine” is sometimes distinguished from “directory” in that with a search engine the database entries are collected automatically using programs (often called “spiders”, “robots” or “crawlers”) which visit web pages and collect the needed data (typically by downloading a page file and subsequently processing the file). Examples of currently available search engines include AltaVista and Excite. “Directory” may be used to describe a database for which entry information is submitted manually, typically by a web site developer. Yahoo! is an example of a currently available Internet directory (Yahoo! also currently provides an automated search engine called Inktomi). “Search engine” as used herein may refer to either of these types of database system.
An illustration of a client-server network containing a search engine server is shown in FIG.
1
. Network
11
connects various computational devices, such as search engine server
15
, clients
17
, and information content servers
42
. Although these computational devices are shown outside of the oval representing network
11
for clarity, these devices are actually a part of the network as well. In the embodiment of
FIG. 1
, network
11
is the World Wide Web, and may include millions of web content servers
42
, represented collectively by the surrounding dashed line, located anywhere in the world. Each content server may store, or “host”, one or more web sites
13
. Each web site includes one or more web pages, as described above. Transmission media
26
are used to connect the search engine server, clients, and content servers hosting the web sites to network
11
, which includes other transmission media and computational devices interconnected all over the world. In a typical searching sequence, communication is established over network
11
between a client
17
and search engine server
15
, typically using a web browser program on the client. Search criteria are entered by a user of the client machine, and transmitted to the search engine server. The search engine server searches the information available on the network, including the information content servers
42
, for documents relevant to the search criteria. This is typically done by searching a database stored on the search engine server, where the database includes previously-formed entries corresponding to web pages accessible over network
11
. The results of the search are transmitted back to the requesting client. The client may then, for example, access particular web pages included in the results directly over network
11
, as desired by the user.
The large and constantly expanding size of the Internet and World Wide Web presents difficult challenges for using search engines in the above-described process. For example, most engines are currently unable to index (create database entries for) the entirety of the documents available on the Internet, or even a substantial fraction of these documents. The storage space and computational time constraints which limit the ability of the engines to index documents may also limit the complexity of the database entries for documents which are indexed, such that only a rough categorization and/or analysis of search results may be performed. This may create various problems for a user of search engines, including excessive numbers of “hits”, or documents matching the search query, returned by the engine. The documents returned in response to a search query may also be incorrectly matched to the subject of the query, and incorrectly or insufficiently categorized (if categorized at all in a way apparent to the user). In some cases, for example, priority of search results returned may be influenced by factors such as advertising revenue to a search engine's web site. Resource limitations on the search engine server often prevent the use of algorithms which might improve the accuracy and categorization of search results. However, the algorithms for categorization and searching are often very good, particularly the ones utilizing techniques from the field of artificial intelligence. The fundamental problem is believed to be the resource restrictions on the search engines. Hence the search engines often use “quick and dirty” algorithms for categorization and searching. Typically this involves examining only a few keywords or hyperlinks in a Web page and rapidly returning the results. Incremental classification is often done in a semi-automa
Conley & Rose, P.C.
Daffer Kevin L.
Dawkins Marilyn S.
International Business Machines Corp.
Robinson Greta
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