Efficient method of using XML value indexes without exact path information to filter XML documents for more specific XPath queries

摘要

A system and method is provided for query processing comprises: creating an index of a database and ordering a set of index candidates from the index into a list based on a set of heuristic rules. A query defining a query path is then reduced into a list of single path expressions. Each index candidate is matched against the list of single path expressions according to the ordering of the index candidates. The matched candidate nodes are also verified to insure that they satisfy the query path.