Local Index for Personal Content Search
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face challenges in searching and locating their personal digital information hosted by online content management services, as existing search engines are inadequate for accessing non-publicly available data, such as personal photos and documents, which are not indexed on the internet.
Innovation Solution
A personal content item searching system that allows users to search their hosted content items using a local index on their user computer, generated by an online content management service, enabling offline searching and quicker query resolution without relying on network connectivity, while conserving processing power and extending battery life.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If users rely on Internet search engines to search for their personal digital information, then they can access publicly available information, but they cannot search for non-publicly available personal content items hosted by online content management services
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a personal search service as an intermediary between users and their hosted content items. This service receives search queries from users, translates them into queries against the hosted content items, and returns results. This mediator enables searching of non-publicly available personal information without requiring users to access the underlying storage infrastructure directly.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a copy of the search functionality specifically tailored for personal content items. Instead of relying on general Internet search engines that cannot access private data, a dedicated search service copies the essential search capabilities and adapts them to work with hosted personal content, enabling users to search their private information as if it were publicly accessible.
2Loss of information
If users continuously connect to the online content management service to search for their content items, then they can access the most up-to-date information, but they consume more network bandwidth and processing power
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial action by having the personal search service cache search results and index information locally. Instead of continuously querying the remote service for every search, the system performs partial searches using cached data and only connects to the online service when necessary to update or retrieve missing information. This reduces network bandwidth consumption and processing energy while maintaining data freshness.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-generating and caching search indexes and results before they are actually needed. The personal search service maintains local copies of searchable content and indexes, allowing users to perform searches offline or with minimal network connectivity. This preliminary preparation reduces the need for continuous network communication and processing power during actual search operations.
3Ease of operation
If users download all their personal content items to their local computer for searching, then they can search offline, but they consume significant storage space and processing resources
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential searchability information from the complete personal content items and stores this extracted data locally. Instead of downloading entire files, the system extracts metadata, search indexes, and key content features that enable searching, while leaving the full content items hosted remotely. This extraction approach enables offline searching without requiring significant local storage space.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the search functionality into two parts: lightweight search indexes and metadata that can be stored locally, and the complete content items that remain hosted remotely. This segmentation allows the system to perform offline searches using the local segment while maintaining access to the full content in the cloud, avoiding the need to store entire content libraries locally.
4Speed
If users process and index their personal content items locally, then they can search quickly without network communication, but they consume significant processing power and energy
Solution Approach 1:
The personal search service acts as an intermediary that performs indexing and processing operations remotely on the online content management service's servers. Instead of requiring users' local computers to process and index all their personal content items, the service handles the computationally intensive indexing tasks in the cloud and returns pre-processed search results or indexes to the user's device. This mediator approach enables fast searching without consuming significant local processing power or energy.
Data Source
AI summary
Enable using a user computer to search the user's personal content items hosted by an online content management service, the online content management service having an indexer computer configured to generate a base index of the user's content items hosted by the service, a base index server computer configured to transmit the generated base index over a network to the user computer, an index mutation generator computer configured to generate index mutations for subsequent changes to user's hosted content items, and an index mutation sever computer configured to transmit the generated index mutations over the network to the user computer. In one aspect, the system and method enable searches of the user's hosted content items and changes thereto to be conducted at the user computer using an index local to the user computer constructed based on the base index and the index mutations received by the user computer.