Method and system for response time optimization of data query rankings and retrieval

Abstract

A method and system for optimizing response time for data query rankings and retrieval is provided. In response to a received search query that contains one or more terms, an information retrieval system identifies a candidate set of documents that match any of the terms. Terms are assigned a term weight making them more or less relevant in relation to other terms. A ranking logic defines score bins from a total score range based on possible matched term weights. A relationship is established that classifies a document into a score bin based on a sum of term weights from matched terms. Documents that match more term weights have higher total relevance scores than documents that match less term weights. The most relevant documents are retrievable without having to retrieve the entire set of candidate documents and without having to compute total relevance scores for all the candidate documents.