METHODS AND DEVICES FOR PROCESSING OBJECTS TO BE SEARCHED

1 . A method of processing an object to be searched, comprising:

receiving a first input indicating a constraint associated with the object;

receiving a second input indicating a category to which the object belong; and

establishing, based on the first input and the second input, a classification condition associating the constraint with the category as a part of a classification policy, the classification policy being used for classifying the object into the category to create a search index.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the constraint involves metadata of the object, the metadata describing attributes of the object.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the constraint involves at least one of a scope of the metadata or an expression of the metadata.

4 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the expression of the metadata comprises at least one of:

a structured statement describing a location of the metadata, or a structured statement describing a query related to the metadata.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the constraint involves an attribute of the category.

6 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the attribute of the category comprises at least one of:

the number of objects contained in the category; or

a size of storage space occupied by objects contained in the category.

7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving a third input of modifying the classification condition; and

in response to receiving the third input, modifying the classification condition.

8 . A method for creating a search index for an object to be searched, comprising:

receiving the object to be searched;

obtaining a classification policy including a set of classification conditions, the classification conditions associating a set of constraints with corresponding categories, and

classifying the object into one of the categories through a matching with the constraints in the classification conditions of the classification policy, to create a search index.

9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the constraints involve metadata of the object and metadata describes attributes of the object; and classifying the object into one category comprises:

obtaining the metadata of the object; and

classifying the object into the category by matching the metadata with the constraints in the classification conditions.

10 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the constraints involve an attribute of the categories, and the method further comprises:

determining the number of objects currently contained in the categories; and

classifying the object into one of the categories in which the number of objects is lower than a predetermined threshold.

11 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the constraints involve an attribute of the categories and the method further comprises:

determining a size of storage space occupied by objects currently contained in the categories; and

classifying the object into one of the categories in which objects occupy the size of storage space smaller than a predetermined threshold.

12 - 24 . (canceled)