Faceted search with relationships between categories

A computer software product for faceted search, including a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium in which computer program instructions are stored, which instructions, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform the steps of:

• defining category sets in a category collection;
• associating the category sets with respective documents of a document collection, wherein the category sets consist of all categories of the category collection to which the respective documents associated therewith belong;
• establishing a first inverted index comprising first inverted index entries for respective first categories of the category collection, wherein each of the first inverted index entries comprises a first posting list of the first documents of the document collection that belong to one of the respective first categories;
• establishing a second inverted index comprising a second inverted index entry for the category sets, the second inverted index entry comprising a second posting list of second documents of the document collection that belong to categories of the category sets;
• responsively to a search query having terms and facets, searching the first inverted index entries to obtain a result set of documents complying with the search query, wherein a facet is a portion of elements of a list of categories;
• iteratively, for respective categories in the category sets of the documents in the result set, searching the second inverted index entry to determine memberships of the respective categories in other category sets of the category collection;
• identifying among the memberships a qualifying group of documents whose associated category sets include a category that matches one of the facets of the search query;
• and
• retrieving at least a portion of the qualifying group of documents.

A data processing system for faceted search, comprising:

• a processor;
• a memory accessible to the processor storing programs and data objects therein, the programs including a category set component, a category set associating component and an indexing component, wherein execution of the programs cause the processor to perform the steps of:
• invoking the category set component to define category sets in a category collection;
• invoking the category set associating component to associate the category sets with respective documents of a document collection, wherein the category sets consist of all categories of the category collection to which the respective documents associated therewith belong;
• invoking the indexing component a first time to establish a first inverted index comprising first inverted index entries for respective first categories of the category collection, wherein each of the first inverted index entries comprises a first posting list of the first documents of the document collection that belong to one of the respective first categories;
• invoking the indexing component a second time to establish a second inverted index comprising a second inverted index entry for the category sets, the second inverted index entry comprising a second posting list of second documents of the document collection that belong to categories of the category sets;
• responsively to a search query having terms and facets, searching the first inverted index entries to obtain a result set of documents complying with the search query, wherein a facet is a portion of elements of a list of categories;
• iteratively, for respective categories in the category sets of the documents in the result set, searching the second inverted index entry to determine memberships of the respective categories in other category sets of the category collection;
• identifying among the memberships a qualifying group of documents whose associated category sets include a category that matches one of the facets of the search query;
• and
• retrieving at least a portion of the qualifying group of documents.