Using multiple search engines to search multimedia data

A computer server on a network that uses a query with one or more media types to search a database with a collection of one or more multimedia documents, each document having one or more parts, each part being of a single media type, the server comprising:

• a. an interface for receiving a query over the network, the query having zero or more logical operators and further receiving zero or more user specifications into the system, the user specifications specifying how zero or more results of the query are combined;
• b. a user interface support process that parses the query into a combined query object, the combined query object comprising of one or more query objects and zero or more query operator objects, each of the query objects being of one media type and the query operator objects determined by the user specification;
• c. one or more search engines, each search engine being able to search the collection of documents by one media type;
• d. a query interface that calls one of the search engines for each one of the query objects according to media type, the search engine executing the query object to produce an interim result object that satisfies the executed query object, each interim result object being a quartet of four fields, the fields being a part number of one of the document parts, a document number of one of the documents, a rank of the document, and the respective media type of the query object, the query interface applying the query operator objects to the interim result objects produced by the respective query objects;
• and
• e. a converter that combines the interim result objects in an interim global result object.

A method for searching a database of multimedia documents comprising of the steps of:

• a. parsing a query into a combined query object, the combined query object comprising of one or more query objects and zero or more query operator objects, each of the query objects being of one media type;
• b. calling of one or more search engines to execute the query to produce an interim result object that satisfies the executed query;
• c. applying the query operator objects to the interim result objects produced by the respective query objects;
• and
• d. combining the interim result objects in an global result object.

A system for searching a database of multimedia documents comprising of the steps:

• a. means for parsing a query into a combined query object, the combined query object comprising one or more query objects and zero or more query operator objects, each of the query objects being of one media type;
• b. means for calling one or more search engines to execute the query to produce an interim result object that satisfies the executed query;
• c. means for applying the query operator objects to the interim result objects produced by the respective query objects;
• and
• d. means for combining the interim result objects in an global result object.