Abstract: A method of organizing, managing, and providing interactive access to data in a database is disclosed, along with a program and a system for implementing the method. Associations between each data Item and at least one ItemSelector are established and stored. A predefined (but modifiable) Vocabulary of ItemSelectors sufficient to describe each Item of the database is created. Presently selected Items are described by a combination of associations defined by an appropriate Boolean combination of each ItemSelector in a presently selected set of ItemSelectors. A user controls the presently selected set by adding an ItemSelector from a presented group, or by removing a previously selected ItemSelector. The system ideally makes available to the user all relevant ItemSelectors—those which, if added to the presently selected set, would result in a set that describes at least one extant data Item. The system ideally makes all presently selected Items available to the user.

Abstract: In the field of computer text search engines, regular expression text pattern matching is combined with an extended set of Boolean operators. A pre-processor is described which will convert mixed Boolean-GREP expressions into equivalent pure GREP expressions enabling existing GREP search technology to be used to implement this invention. Additional optimizations are described when users need to search for any one of a list of text patterns.