Abstract: An offline system of a question and answer system includes a batch update crawl cluster that includes a crawl database within the file system, and a map reducer within the index controller, the map reducer having a reducer core with a plurality of slow queues that retrieve the content from the crawl database, and a reducer adapter that writes an output of the reducer core into the hierarchical database. The offline system further includes a fast update crawl cluster that includes a crawl database within the file system, and a map reducer within the index controller, the map reducer having a reducer core with a plurality of fast queues that retrieve the content from the crawl database at a faster frequency than the slow queues, and a reducer adapter that writes an output of the reducer core into the hierarchical database.

Abstract: A question and answer system for providing results to requests comprising an online system and an offline system. The offline system includes a file system, a hierarchical database and an index controller having at least one reducer that retrieves content from the file system and at least one writer that maintains the data store with the content retrieved by the reducer, and maintains the hierarchical database with data reflecting the content in the data store. The offline system includes an image queue, an index controller that updates the image queue with data representing content in the data store that include images, an image extraction service having a thumbnailer generating thumbnails for the images, an uploader and at least one static image server, the uploader uploading the thumbnails and images to the static image server.

Abstract: A question and answer system for providing results to requests comprising an online system and an offline system. The offline system includes a question and answer extraction module extracting question and answer pairs from the hierarchical database and a question type detector determining a type of question for each question in the question and answer pairs. An index controller indexes question and answer pairs based on the question type.

Abstract: An offline system of a question and answer system includes a batch update crawl cluster that includes a crawl database within the file system, and a map reducer within the index controller, the map reducer having a reducer core with a plurality of slow queues that retrieve the content from the crawl database, and a reducer adapter that writes an output of the reducer core into the hierarchical database. The offline system further includes a fast update crawl cluster that includes a crawl database within the file system, and a map reducer within the index controller, the map reducer having a reducer core with a plurality of fast queues that retrieve the content from the crawl database at a faster frequency than the slow queues, and a reducer adapter that writes an output of the reducer core into the hierarchical database.

Abstract: A question and answer system for providing results to requests comprising an online system and an offline system. The online system includes at least one data store, a question and answer search engine that receives a request from a user computer system, determines a result from the data store based on the request and returns the answer to the user computer system. The question and answer search engine includes a request type determinator determining a type of the request and a plurality of answer mode modules that are executed based on the request type. The offline system includes a file system, a hierarchical database and an index controller having at least one reducer that retrieves content from the file system and at least one writer that maintains the data store with the content retrieved by the reducer, and maintains the hierarchical database with data reflecting the content in the data store.

Abstract: A question and answer search engine includes a load balancer that receives the request from the user computer system, a plurality of front end systems that receive the requests from the load balancer, including the request from the user computer system, an aggregator and a plurality of retrievers, the aggregator being connected to the front end systems and to the retrievers, the request passing from a respective front end system via the aggregator to at least a first of the retrievers, the first retriever returning a result via the aggregator and the respective front end system to the user computer system in response to the request.

Abstract: A question and answer system for providing results to requests comprising an online system and an offline system. The offline system includes a file system, a hierarchical database and an index controller having at least one reducer that retrieves content from the file system and at least one writer that maintains the data store with the content retrieved by the reducer, and maintains the hierarchical database with data reflecting the content in the data store. The offline system includes an image queue, an index controller that updates the image queue with data representing content in the data store that include images, an image extraction service having a thumbnailer generating thumbnails for the images, an uploader and at least one static image server, the uploader uploading the thumbnails and images to the static image server.

Abstract: A method of processing data is described. A set of documents is stored in a data store. A hierarchical data structure is created based on concepts within the documents. The hierarchical data structure's generated by generating phrases from the documents, initiating clustering of the phrases by entering respective documents into each of a plurality of slots, wherein only one result is entered for multiple documents that are similar, clustering the documents for each slot by creating trees with respective nodes representing the documents that are similar, and labeling each tree by determining a concept of each tree and its nodes. Once labeling is completed, a sentence summarizer and sentence filtering and scoring are applied to create summary sentences and scores.