5. The method of claim 1 , wherein automatically indexing the data object is performed on a notification-driven basis.
1. A method performed by an electronic computing system, the method comprising: storing, on computer-readable data storage, a set of data objects, each of the data objects comprising a numerical property; storing, on the computer-readable data storage, a search index that contains search index entries, each of which specifies a meta-property, a reference string and a set of data object identifiers; automatically generating the search index at the electronic computing system, including: receiving, at the electronic computing system, an indexing event indicating a change in the set of data objects has occurred, wherein the indexing event notifies the electronic computing system that a data object has been added, deleted, or edited; and responding to the indexing event by automatically indexing a data object that has been added, deleted or edited, comprising: automatically determining whether a property of the data object is the numerical property; determining whether each block in a set of blocks that represent the numerical property have been processed; upon determining a block has not been processed, automatically identifying a first search index entry in the search index that is associated with the meta-property associated with the given block and that specifies the reference string comprising a base reference string having a length proportional to a number represented by the given block; and after identifying the first search index entry, automatically adding an identifier of the data object to the first search index entry; automatically transforming, at the electronic computing system, an original search query into a transformed search query such that a numerical comparison query element in the original search query that specifies the numerical property is transformed into an equivalent textual comparison query element in the transformed search query, the equivalent textual comparison query element not including the numerical property specified in the numerical comparison query element; automatically using, at the electronic computing system, the search index to identify a result set that contains ones of the data objects that satisfy the transformed search query; and after identifying the result set, automatically presenting, at a presentation device, in response to the original search query, a list of the data objects in the result set.