Abstract: The subject disclosure pertains to systems and methods for performing natural language processing in which tokens are mapped to task slots. The system includes a mapper component that generates a lattice representing possible interpretations of the tokens, a decoder component that creates a ranked list of paths traversing the lattice, a scorer component that generates scores used to rank paths and post-processing components that format the paths for use by other software. Each of these components may be independent, such that the component may be modified or replaced without affecting the remaining components. This allows a variety of different mathematical models and algorithms to be tested or deployed without requiring changes to the remainder of the system.

Abstract: Word-breaking of a query from a client machine in a client-server environment includes determining whether to use a first word breaking module operable with a client machine in the client-server environment and/or a second word breaking module operable with a server in the client-server environment.

Abstract: Named entity recognizers are distributed throughout a client-server system based on where the data for named entity recognition resides.

Abstract: The subject invention relates to systems and methods that automatically combine or interleave received search results from across knowledge databases in a uniform and consistent manner. In one aspect, an automated search results blending system is provided. The system includes a search component that directs a query to at least two databases. A learning component is employed to rank or score search results that are received from the databases in response to the query. A blending component automatically interleaves or combines the results according to the rank in order to provide a consistent ranking system across differing knowledge sources and search tools.

Abstract: The subject invention relates to systems and methods that employ automated learning techniques to database and information retrieval systems in order to facilitate knowledge capabilities for users and systems. In one aspect, an adaptive information retrieval system is provided. The system includes a database component to store structured and unstructured data values. A search component queries the data values from the database, wherein a learning component associated with the search component or the database component is provided to facilitate retrieval of desired information.

Abstract: An adaptive customer assistance system that can serve as an integrated online and offline help platform for a suite of software products is provided. The assistance system includes a customer-interaction interface and a data management component and a download management component for distributed customer interaction. The data management component includes an authoring component, a download component, a runtime component and an analysis component. The runtime component, which includes a customer assistance model, is configured to receive a user-formulated question from the customer-interaction interface. The runtime component provides an answer to the user-formulated question based on information included in the customer assistance model. The analysis component automatically analyzes, in substantially real-time, the user-formulated question and the corresponding answer, and provides an analysis output for use in improving a quality of customer assistance.

Abstract: Property store information and an aggregation of a plurality of ranking mechanisms, including a learning mechanism, are leveraged to provide performant query results with increased user relevancy. The learning mechanism permits query feedback to be accepted to facilitate in optimizing user relevance. This mechanism can also be incorporated with traditional Information Retrieval (IR) components, each supplying independent ranking to a relevance aggregation function that determines relevancy at a high level. This precludes diminishing the value of query feedback that occurs when the data is fed into traditional IR algorithms. By allowing the query feedback to maintain its proper weighting and utilizing scope and bias capabilities of the property store information, relevance increases in a highly performant manner.

Abstract: A system for dynamically updating user accessible features of a software application on a client computer has a user interface, a local usage data file, and a data mining engine. The user interface is adapted to receive operator inputs. The local usage data file is adapted to store usage information corresponding to the operator inputs. The data mining engine is adapted to process the stored usage information and to generate local adjustments to a user interface of the software application based on the operator inputs. In one embodiment, a server is adapted to receive usage data from a plurality of application instances on a plurality of client computers and to generate global adjustments based on the received usage data. In one embodiment, the system has a merge feature adapted to blend and resolve conflicts between local and global adjustments to generate an interface adjustment for the user interface.

Abstract: A method and system for generating a summary of a document. The summary generating system generates the summary from the sentences that form the document. The summary generating system calculates a weight for each of the sentences in the document. The weight indicates the importance of the sentence to the document. The summary generating system then selects sentences based on their calculated weights. The summary generating system creates a summary of the selected sentences such that selected sentences are ordered in the created summary in the same relative order as in the document. In one embodiment, the summary generating system identifies sets of sentences whose total length of the sentences in the set is less than a maximum length. The summary generating system then selects an identified set of sentences whose total of the calculated weights of the sentences is greatest as the generated summary. The length of a sentence may be measured in characters or words.

Abstract: A method and computing system for providing a highly reliable web site that is capable of handling millions of Internet users per day. The computing system is customizable on a per user basis yet seamlessly aggregates data from a number of information providers, such as news services, weather services, stock services, personal email, and even a community specific service. The computing system includes a plurality of personalization stores that maintain personalization data for a corresponding Internet user. The computing system is based on a federated model in which a single entry point spans to a plurality of web servers. Each web server has an aggregation module, such as an Internet Server API (ISAPI) filter, that retrieves user-specific data “clips” from the personalization store and passes the data to one or more provider objects.

Abstract: A method and system for generating a summary of a document. The summary generating system generates the summary from the sentences that form the document. The summary generating system calculates a weight for each of the sentences in the document. The weight indicates the importance of the sentence to the document. The summary generating system then selects sentences based on their calculated weights. The summary generating system creates a summary of the selected sentences such that selected sentences are ordered in the created summary in the same relative order as in the document. In one embodiment, the summary generating system identifies sets of sentences whose total length of the sentences in the set is less than a maximum length. The summary generating system then selects an identified set of sentences whose total of the calculated weights of the sentences is greatest as the generated summary. The length of a sentence may be measured in characters or words.

Abstract: A method and system for generating a weight for phrases within each document in a collection of documents. Each document has terms such as words and numbers. Each phrase comprises component terms. Each term frequency represents the number of occurrences of a term in a document, and the phrase frequency represents the number of occurrences of a phrase in a document. To generate the weight, the weighting system first estimates a document frequency for the phrase by multiplying an estimated phrase probability of the phrase times the number of documents that contain each component term. The estimated phrase probability is an estimation of the probability that any phrase in documents that contain each component term is the phrase whose weight is to be estimated. The document frequency is the number of the documents that contain the phrase. The weighting system then estimates a total phrase frequency for the phrase as the average phrase frequency for the phrase times the estimated document frequency for the phrase.

Abstract: A weighting system for calculating the term-document importance for each term within each document that is part of a collection of documents (i.e., a corpus). The weighting system calculates the importance of a term within a document based on a computed normalized term frequency and a computed inverse document frequency. The computed normalized term frequency is a function, referred to as the “computed term frequency function” (“A”), of a normalized term frequency. The normalized term frequency is the term frequency, which is the number of times that the term occurs in the document, normalized by the total term frequency of the term within all documents, which is the total number of times that the term occurs in all the documents. The weighting system normalizes the term frequency by dividing the term frequency by a function, referred to as the “normalizing term frequency function” (“&Ggr;”), of the total term frequency.

Abstract: A cache system allocates memory for storage of data items by defining a series of small blocks that are uniform in size. The system allocates one or more blocks from memory and assigns them for storage of a data item. If the data item exceeds the predetermined block size, more blocks are assigned for storage. If a residual portion of the data item less than the predetermined the block size remains, the operating system may allocate an additional small storage block to store the residual portion of the data item. The operating system allocates a large number of small blocks with a plurality of blocks having different sizes where a first plurality of blocks has one block size and a second plurality of blocks has a different block size. The large number of blocks allocated by the operating system avoid contention from multiple users requesting access to the data cache. The predetermined blocks are allocated by the data cache software itself and are not allocated by the operating system.

Abstract: A cache system controls the insertion and deletion of data items using a plurality of utilization lists. When a data item is stored within the data cache, a corresponding data pointer, or other indicator, is stored within the utilization list in a manner indicative of the sequence in which data items were stored in the data cache. When a data item is subsequently retrieved from the data cache, the corresponding data pointer may be altered or moved to indicate that the data item has recently been retrieved. The data pointers corresponding to data items that have never been retrieved will indicate the sequence with which the data items were stored in the cache such that data items may be identified as least recently used (LRU) data items. The data pointers corresponding to data items that have been retrieved provide an indication of the sequence with which the data items have been retrieved such that the most recently retrieved data item is considered the most recently used (MRU) data item.

Abstract: A method and computing system for providing a highly reliable web site that is capable of handling millions of Internet users per day. The computing system is customizable on a per user basis yet seamlessly aggregates data from a number of information providers, such as news services, weather services, stock services, personal email, and even a community specific service. The computing system includes a plurality of personalization stores that maintain personalization data for a corresponding Internet user. The computing system is based on a federated model in which a single entry point spans to a plurality of web servers. Each web server has an aggregation module, such as an Internet Server API (ISAPI) filter, that retrieves user-specific data “clips” from the personalization store and passes the data to one or more provider objects.

Abstract: The present invention provides a distributed software facility for tailoring an information retrieval query issued by a user based upon the position of that user within an organization of users. In a query client, the facility generates an information retrieval query on behalf of an identified user. The identified user is a member both of first logical subset of the organization and of a second logical subset of the organization. In a first proxy server corresponding to the first logical subset of the organization, the facility modifies the generated query based upon query modification criteria specified for members of the first logical subset. In a second proxy server corresponding to a second logical subset of the organization, the facility modifies the generated query based upon query modification criteria specified for members of the second logical subset. The facility then processes the query as modified by the first and second proxy servers to retrieve information responsive to the modified query.