Contextual search of a collaborative environment

摘要

Techniques are provided for using bonds, which reflect relationships between items, to facilitate searches against the items. The degree of separation between any two given searchable items is based on the minimum number of bonds that have to be traversed to arrive at one of the two searchable items when starting at the other of the two searchable items. The bonds are used to respond to a search request, performing a search relative to a particular searchable item. For example, the search may involve only those searchable items that are within a particular degree of separation of the particular searchable item. As another example, the search may involve determining the order in which searchable items are compared against search criteria of the search request based on the degree of separation of the searchable items from the particular searchable item.