Abstract: A machine-implemented system and method of information retrieval, comprising: receiving queries including an ordered set of clause definitions, each clause definition including a clause pipeline, wherein a clause pipeline includes an ordered set of clause specifications that comprises an expansion operation and/or a filter operation, where the queries are received from a calling application; parsing the queries into a collection of expression pools; processing data by the expression pools in the collection to generate a current object set; and returning the current object set to the calling application in response to the queries.