System and method for federated searching

A tangible computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon for:

• receiving a user query at a first location;
• extracting terms from the user query by parsing the terms from the user query on a term-by-term basis, determining if any terms in the user query are relevant to individual slots utilized by a search facility of a second location, and for those terms that are determined to be relevant to individual slots, filling those slots with the relevant terms;
• assigning the user query a ranking based on a weight assigned to at least a portion of the extracted terms;
• sending the user query to the second location for searching if the ranking of the terms meets a predetermined threshold and searching the user query at the second location;
• searching the user query at the first location if the ranking of the user query does not meet the predetermined threshold;
• and
• receiving a response from one of the first location or the second location.

A method of federated searching implemented by a computer, comprising:

• receiving a user query at a first location, said user query containing terms for conducting a search;
• extracting terms from the user query before conducting said search, wherein said extracting includes,
• parsing the terms from the user query on a term-by-term basis,
• determining if any terms in the user query are relevant to individual slots utilized by a search facility of a second location by referencing a staging database to find all substrings of the user query, and
• for those terms that are determined to be relevant to individual slots, filling those slots with the relevant terms;
• assigning the user query a ranking based on a weight assigned to at least a portion of the extracted terms,
• wherein if the ranking of the user query meets a predetermined threshold,
• sending the user query to the second location and searching the user query at the second location, wherein the terms are normalized to forms that the second location can interpret, otherwise,
• searching the user query at the first location if the ranking of the user query does not meet the predetermined threshold;
• and
• receiving a response from the first location or the second location.