1. A method for computing summary information on documents containing hierarchical named scopes comprising a plurality of associations between a scope and a value or between a scope and a value-weight pair, wherein the method comprises steps for applying a query to a set of documents, and identifying a result set of matching documents and query-dependent subsections of the matching documents, and wherein the method is characterized by an additional step for computing summary information on document scopes, their values, and associated weights across the result set, and weighting the values with a summary value metric (SVM), said summary value metric being a combination of weighted statistical and dynamic properties of an attribute value, thus providing a measure of the probability of the attribute value.