(Oracle, PLS)
A ``master index'' system identifies important piece of information in a document. MasterIndex can be used to:
* Create a back-of-book style index for a document--listing concepts, definitions, and other information types that may suggest keywords to users
* Create hierarchical indexes for querying and browsing through groups of documents
* Populate databases with structured content information, including actions (i.e., who did what to whom)
* Create hypertext links for related information in a document and among multiple documents
* Enable intelligent information-extraction agents to track specific information and trends
Note: if the master index is written in a standard form, the authors can provide it along with their data, which makes the global index richer.
See also ``distributed database model'', ``remote index''.