US 12,169,531 B2
Optimizing request sizes in a search engine fanout
Harrison Donald Engel, El Paso, TX (US); and Sankalp Navneet Bihani, Bellevue, WA (US)
Assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed on Jan. 27, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/586,240.
Prior Publication US 2023/0237107 A1, Jul. 27, 2023
Int. Cl. G06F 16/953 (2019.01); G06F 16/2457 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/953 (2019.01) [G06F 16/24578 (2019.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method, comprising:
receiving a search request with a search size;
sending a shard request to a plurality of index shards with a size request for an amount of search results, wherein the size request is less than the search size;
receiving the search results from the plurality of index shards;
using a plurality of flags in the search results to determine whether the search results from the plurality of index shards are complete;
sending a second shard request with a second size request in response to determining that the search results are not complete by identifying at least one index shard of the plurality of index shards that includes a first flag without a second flag, wherein a first flag of the plurality of flags indicates that the search result is a last search result received from an index shard and a second flag of the plurality of flags indicates that no more search results are available from the index shard; and
returning the search results in response to determining that the search results are complete.