ENTITY EXPANSION AND GROUPING

A computer readable storage medium includes executable instructions to convert an entity to a standard form including normalized attributes, a tag reference and a feature. The entity is expanded with corresponding variants. The standard form and corresponding variants are combined to form an annotated entity in a first processing step. The entity is assigned to a group in a second processing step that accesses the annotated entity. The entity is processed in a single pass comprising the first processing step and the second processing step.