EVALUATION OF CONTENT OF A DATA SET USING MULTIPLE AND/OR COMPLEX QUERIES

The invention enables evaluation of the content of a set of data to determine whether the data set satisfies one or more queries. The invention enables rapid evaluation of large numbers of data sets much more rapidly than has previously been possible, even when the number of queries is large and/or the queries are complex. The queries are evaluated using an execution plan of query terms that is constructed from one or more specified queries by translating each query term of each query into one or more evidence descriptors and one or more combination operators, and operably relating each of the combination operators to at least one of the evidence descriptors or other combination operators, such that each query is defined by one or more of the evidence descriptors and one or more of the combination operators that are operably related to each other. Preferably, none of the evidence descriptors or combination operators are duplicated in the execution plan. The invention can be used to evaluate data sets of a variety of types, such as text documents and databases. The invention can be further optimized to achieve rapid evaluation of a data set with respect to the queries in two steps. First, one or more candidate queries that may be satisfied by the data set are identified by approximately evaluating each query. Second, each of the candidate queries is fully evaluated to determine whether the candidate query is satisfied by the data set.