A method, apparatus, and computer readable medium for searching and
navigating a document database is provided. Document categories are
assigned unique numeric category identifiers. Each document in a database
is assigned to one of the document categories. Metadata is associated
with each electronic document that includes the numeric category
identifier corresponding to the category assigned to the document. The
database may be searched or browsed based on category by utilizing the
metadata. URLs may also be embedded in a Web page that includes a list of
document identifiers and an index. The list of document identifiers is a
list containing the identities of an arbitrary number of search results.
The index identifies one of the documents in the list of document
identifiers to be retrieved. When such a URL is selected, a Web server
computer utilizes the list of document identifiers and the index to
identify the document to be returned.