A method enables identification of a similarity level between a user-provided data item and a data item within a set of data documents. The method includes a representation generator determining, for each term in an enumeration of terms, occurrence information. The representation generator generates, for each term, a sparse distributed representation (SDR) using the occurrence information. The method includes receiving, by a filtering module, a filtering criterion. The method includes generating, by the representation generator, for the filtering criterion, at least one SDR. The method includes generating, by the representation generator, for a first of a plurality of streamed documents received from a data source, a compound SDR. The method includes determining, by a similarity engine executing on the second computing device, a distance between the filtering criterion SDR and the generated compound SDR. The method includes acting on the first streamed document, based upon the determined distance.