Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

International Business Machines Corporation

John Christopher Shafer

Rakesh Agrawal

Stelios Paparizos

Manish Mehta

Sreenivas Gollapudi

Anitha Kannan

Ariel Fuxman

Alexandros Ntoulas

Matthew Graham Dyor

Krishnaram Kenthapadi

Ramakrishnan Srikant

Roberto Javier Bayardo

Ching-Tien Ho

Samuel Ieong

Joseph Futty

Dimitrios Gunopulos

Sunita Sarawagi

Dan E Walther

Mohammed Moinuddin

Techniques are disclosed herein for providing a custom search engine. In one aspect, a first search query is received from a requestor. First search results contain search result items that match the first search query are Obtained. A least one sub-query is generated from the first search results. The generating is based on rules for a particular custom search engine. Second search results that match the sub-query are then obtained. A search result set is formed from a corpus that includes the first search results and the second search results. The generating of the search result set is based on the rules for the particular custom search engine. The search result set is provided to the requestor. In one aspect an interface for designing a custom search engine is provided. The interface allows the designer to specify the layout of a search results page.

Customized search

Techniques are disclosed herein for providing a custom search engine. In one aspect, a first search query is received from a requestor. First search results contain search result items that match the first search query are obtained. A least one sub-query is generated from the first search results. The generating is based on rules for a particular custom search engine. Second search results that match the sub-query are then obtained. A search result set is formed from a corpus that includes the first search results and the second search results. The generating of the search result set is based on the rules for the particular custom search engine. The search result set is provided to the requestor. In one aspect an interface for designing a custom search engine is provided. The interface allows the designer to specify the layout of a search results page.

Techniques are disclosed herein for providing a custom search engine. In one aspect, a first search query is received from a requestor. First search results contain search result items that match the first search query are obtained. A least one sub-query is generated from the first search results. The generating is based on rules for a particular custom search engine. Second search results that match the sub-query are then obtained. A search result set is formed from a corpus that includes the first search results and the second search results. The generating of the search result set is based on the rules for the particular custom search engine. The search result set is provided to the requester. In one aspect an interface for designing a custom search engine is provided. The interface allows the designer to specify the layout of a search results page.

A structured query may specify attribute values for attributes. An estimate of the number of items that will match the structured query if it is applied to a structured database is determined. If the estimated number of items is below a threshold, the structured query may be relaxed to form new candidate structured queries. The number of candidate queries may be determined based on a desired running time. Each of the candidate structured queries may be determined by changing one or more attribute values of the attributes of the structured query. Estimates of the number of items each of the candidate structured queries will match is determined, and the candidate structured query that has the highest matching estimation is used to query the database. The matching results may be output.

Relaxation for structured queries

An achievement system tracks users' offline activities and awards achievements to users for participation in particular offline activities. The achievements that are awarded for particular activities and/or to particular users may be sponsored by merchants, who may compensate an achievement system provider for the opportunity to sponsor the achievements. To award users achievements, the users' offline activities are tracked. When a user participates in an offline activity for which achievements are available, the user is awarded an achievement. The achievement may be stored in an achievement profile for the user. In some embodiments, achievements earned by users may be converted into other benefits and alternative awards.

Bringing achievements to an offline world

A framework is provided for composing texts about objects with structured information about these objects, and thus disclosed are methodologies for linking information from at least two data sources&#x2014;one comprising a plurality of documents comprising text pertaining to at least one object, and one comprising a plurality of structured records comprising at least one characteristic of the at least one object, each characteristic comprising one property name and an associated property value corresponding to the property name for the at least one object&#x2014;by determining one or more instance-based traits for each object in both data sources and associating at least one record with at least one document that refers to each object, each trait comprising one or more characteristics that identifiably distinguish each object from all other objects.

Composing text and structured databases

Messages generated by user accounts in a social networking application over a period of time are processed to determine the subjects and topic associated with the messages, as well as the geographical locations of the users associated with the user accounts, and the times when the users associated with the accounts are most active. The determined, subject, time, and location information is used to create a model that may be used to predict whether a user in the social networking application is willing, available, and has the knowledge or topical affinity to answer a question proposed by another user in the social networking application based on a subject, time, and/or location associated with the question. When a user enters a question, the user may be presented with a list of their friends or contacts ranked according to the probabilities generated by the model.

Selecting user accounts in social network to answer question

Described is answering online web queries from a structured data store, such as a products database. An online web search query is modified into an evaluation expression for accessing a structured data store (e.g., a database, XML file, a flat table) to find search results. A query is matched to a pattern, which is used to generate the expression, as well as determine to which structured data store the query is routed. Tokens (e.g., words) in the query are processed against a dictionary of token classes (sets of tokens) and patterns (sets of token classes) to annotate the query to map the query to the matching pattern. A translation process generates the expression based on translation hints that correspond to the matching pattern. Also described is offline mining of query logs to generate the dictionaries.

Answering web queries using structured data sources

Described is a technology for obtaining labeled sample data. Labeling guidelines are converted into binary yes/no questions regarding data samples. The questions and data samples are provided to judges who then answer the questions for each sample. The answers are input to a label assignment algorithm that associates a label with each sample based upon the answers. If the guidelines are modified and previous answers to the binary questions are maintained, at least some of the previous answers may be used in re-labeling the samples in view of the modification.

Labeling data samples using objective questions

A system and method for exporing a web-accessible database includes providing a GUI that a user can manipulate to quickly modify the results of a query to expand or contract the results set, without requiring additional querying. Attribute controls can be manipulated to impose restrictions on the results set, including by designating example records the attributes of which are used to restrict the records displayed to the user. Only records that can be displayed are instantiated, to further increase the speed of the system.

System and method for web-based querying

A user can easily organize computerized document folders by associating a few sample documents in the document database with each folder. The present invention learns folder profiles based on the sample documents and moves the remaining documents into the folders accordingly. In this way, the user can construct new folders, or rearrange existing folders, or cause the computer to automatically rearrange and maintain the folders. This is particularly useful for managing a database of perhaps thousands of emails.

System and method for organizing repositories of semi-structured documents such as email

A method and system are disclosed for generating a decision-tree classifier in parallel in a multi-processor system, from a training set of records. The method comprises the steps of: partitioning the records among the processors, each processor generating an attribute list for each attribute, and the processors cooperatively generating a decision tree by repeatedly partitioning the records using the attribute lists. For each node, each processor determines its best split test and, along with other processors, selects the best overall split for the records at that node. Preferably, the gini-index and class histograms are used in determining the best splits. Also, each processor builds a hash table using the attribute list of the split attribute and shares it with other processors. The hash tables are used for splitting the remaining attribute lists. The created tree is then pruned based on the MDL principle, which encodes the tree and split tests in an MDL-based code, and determines whether to prune and how to prune each node based on the code length of the node.

Method and system for generating a decision-tree classifier in parallel

A method and system for performing spatial proximity joins on high-dimensional points representing data objects of a database in parallel in a multiprocessor system. The method comprises the steps of: partitioning the data points among the processors; creating index structures for the data points of the processors in parallel; assigning the join operations to the processors using the index structures; and simultaneously redistributing and joining the data points in the processors in parallel based on a predetermined joining condition. An efficient data structure, .epsilon.-K-D-B tree, is used to provide fast access to the high-dimensional points and to minimize system storage requirements. The invention achieves fast response time and requires minimum storage space by having structurally identical indices among the processors, assigning workload based on the join costs, and redistributing the data points among the processors while joining the data whenever possible.

Method and system for performing proximity joins on high-dimensional

A multiprocessor including a plurality of processing systems is disclosed for discovering consumer purchasing tendencies. Each processing system of the multiprocessor identifies consumer transaction itemsets that are stored in a database that is distributed among the processing systems and which appear in the database a user-defined minimum number of times, referred to as minimum support. Then, the system discovers association rules in the itemsets by comparing the ratio of the number of times each of the large itemsets appears in the database to the number of times particular subsets of the itemset appear in the database. When the ratio exceeds a predetermined minimum confidence value, the system outputs an association rule which is representative of purchasing tendencies of consumers.

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Los Altos, CA, United States of America

John Christopher Shafer