JP2001297089A - Document search method and storage medium storing program for performing the method - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] [Problem] To provide a document search method that requires only one specification of search bibliographic information even when performing document search on a plurality of document management systems having different bibliographic information formats. . In a document search method for performing a document search on a plurality of document management systems having different forms of bibliographic information, search bibliographic information is designated as search conditions in association with a data type (S1) and stored. Out of a plurality of items of bibliographic information stored in association with each document content, the item whose data type matches the search bibliographic information specified as a search condition is set as a search target (S5), and the specified item is set. A document having bibliographic information matching the retrieved bibliographic information is searched across a plurality of document management systems (S6).
The search results from the plurality of document management systems are compiled (S8).

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a document search method capable of performing a document search over a plurality of document management systems having different forms of bibliographic information via a network, and a program for implementing the method. And a storage medium storing the information.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A conventional document management system is, for example, shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. 3, it is configured as a network system including one or a plurality of document management servers 21 and a plurality of client terminal devices 22 such as personal computers. The document management server 21 includes a document storage unit having a plurality of document storage location units called folders or the like constituted by partial areas such as a hard disk and a compact disk. And so on. The client terminal device 22 also has a document storage unit, and stores document data and the like in the document storage unit. When the document data is stored in the document storage unit in the document management server 21, for example, when registering a document, the user is required to register the document content to be registered, the document name linked to the document content, and the registrant name. And bibliographic information such as keywords, and specify a folder for storing them as document data. As a result, the document management means in the document management server 21 adds the given bibliographic information and the registration date acquired from the clock circuit to the bibliographic information list, registers the bibliographic information, and adds the bibliographic information to which the given document content has been added. Link to the information and save it in the specified folder. To retrieve the stored desired document content, the user gives a browsing instruction specifying a folder name and a part of search bibliographic information such as a document name as search conditions, for example. The document management means within the server searches for a corresponding document according to a browsing instruction or the like, creates list information of the corresponding document, and displays the list information. Then, by designating a desired document from among them, the document content of the document is stored in the document management server 21.
The client terminal device 22 that has read the document content from the document storage unit therein displays the document content on a display device therein, prints the document content on a recording sheet, and outputs the recording sheet. Each unit information constituting the document list information includes a document name (file name), a registrant name, a registration date, a keyword, and the like. In addition, when performing a document search on a plurality of document management systems having different formats of bibliographic information, the user searches for each of the document management systems in accordance with the format of the bibliographic information provided by the document management system. Search by specifying bibliographic information. For example, when performing a document search on three document management systems, search bibliographic information is specified three times according to each document management system.

[0003]

However, in the prior art, when a document search is performed on a plurality of document management systems having different formats of bibliographic information, the search bibliographic information must be specified many times. There is a problem that the operation is complicated. An object of the present invention is to solve such a problem of the related art. That is, an object of the present invention is to provide a document search method and a document search method in which the search bibliographic information needs to be specified only once even when a document search is performed on a plurality of document management systems having different bibliographic information formats. An object of the present invention is to provide a storage medium storing a program to be executed.

[0004]

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a document search method for performing a document search on a plurality of document management systems having different bibliographic information formats. A search bibliography specified as a search target, from among a plurality of items of bibliographic information stored in association with each stored document content, items whose data type matches search bibliographic information specified as a search condition. Documents having bibliographic information matching the information are searched for over a plurality of document management systems. According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the document search method according to the first aspect, the search bibliographic information and the search result information are stored in association with each other, and when the search is performed again, the search specified as the search condition is performed. Of the bibliographic information, only the search bibliographic information that is different from the stored search bibliographic information is searched. If a part of the specified search bibliographic information is in the stored search bibliographic information, the stored search bibliographic information is stored. It is characterized in that the search result information at the time of the search is created again using the existing search result information and the newly performed search result information. According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the document search method according to the first or second aspect, when the search condition is specified, the search bibliographic information is specified in association with the item of the bibliographic information, and a plurality of document managements are performed. Among the systems, at least a document management system used when designating a search condition is characterized in that only items whose bibliographic information items match are searched. According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, a program for executing the document search method according to any one of the first to third aspects is stored.

[0005]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a document management system for implementing a document management method according to one embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, the document management system has a plurality of information processing apparatuses 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d connected via a transmission line 9. Each of the information processing apparatuses 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d is constituted by a personal computer or a document management server. Each of the information processing apparatuses 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d includes a search processing unit 2 and a document storage device 3. The document storage device 3
Bibliographic information (Bibliographic information A, Bibliographic information B, ----, etc.)
And a plurality of document data sets (document DB1, document DB2,..., Etc. in the drawing, each of which is hereinafter referred to as a document DB). It is assumed that the format of the bibliographic information of each document DB is different. Bibliographic information is information indicating attributes of a document, such as a document name and a registration date, and its items and data types differ depending on the document DB. FIG. 2 shows each of the information processing apparatuses 1a, 1b, 1c, 1
It is a block diagram which shows d. As shown in FIG. 2, each of the information processing apparatuses 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d includes a search processing unit 2,
A document storage device 3, a system control unit 4 that controls and manages the entire information processing device, a communication control unit 5 that controls communication with another information processing device 1, a display device (for example, a CRT)
6, an input device 7 including a keyboard and a mouse, and an output device (for example, a printer) 8. Further, the search processing unit 2 includes a search command issuing unit 11, a document search unit 12, a search result management unit 13, and a search result storage unit 14. The search command issuing unit 11 causes search bibliographic information to be specified as a search condition or issues a search request to a search unit. The document search unit 12 searches for a document having bibliographic information that matches the specified search bibliographic information. The search result management unit 13 manages search result information. The search result storage unit 14 stores search result information. FIG.
FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram for explaining document data used in the document management method of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 3, the document data includes document contents and bibliographic information. The document content includes bitmap image data and J
It consists of one or more pages of data including image data such as PEG image data and text data.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram for explaining an example of bibliographic information of each document DB corresponding to each information processing apparatus 1.
As shown in FIG. 4, in the document DB1, data of a document name, a creator, remarks, a creation date, an update date, and the number of pages are managed as bibliographic information. The data of the document name, the creator, and the remarks are character string data, the data of the creation date and the update date are date data, and the data of the number of pages are numerical data. Further, the document DB 2 includes reference type data and BOOL type data as bibliographic information in addition to character string type data and numeric type data. Reference type data is data in which data contents are managed in a separate table, and the substance of the data in the bibliographic information is represented only by identification information (ID). FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram for describing an example of the reference type data. The reference type data has a data structure in which, for example, a value of ID = 1 is included in the bibliographic information, and when it is displayed on a screen or the like, a separate “design document” corresponding to ID = 1 is used. ing. BOOL-type data is data that takes one of two values: presence or absence. FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram for explaining an example of a search condition setting menu used in the document search method of the present invention. In the input area to the right of the character string type search condition, numeric type search condition, date type search condition, and BOOL type search condition of this search condition setting menu, bibliographic information as a search condition is input in association with each data type. I do. Like reference type data, data having a difference in the data type set by the identification information of each document DB is not searched. In the “inter-item condition” on the screen, OR or AND between search items (bibliographic information items) is specified. When OR is specified, documents that meet any of the search conditions between items are to be searched. When AND is specified, documents that satisfy all of the search conditions between items are to be searched. In such a search condition setting menu, for example, when the word “design” is input as a character string type, a document including a character string “design” in character string type data is to be searched.
A search condition is input using the search condition setting menu shown in FIG. 6, and a result of searching for documents 1 and 2 included in each of the document DBs 1 to 3 shown in FIG. 4 is shown. FIG. FIG. 7A shows an example in which “Ichiro” is input as a character string type search condition. FIG. 7B shows an example in which a value from 1 to 1000 is specified and input as a search condition for numerical data. FIG. 7C is an example in which the AND of the search conditions in FIGS. 7A and 7B is obtained. The search bibliographic information specified in the search condition setting menu is searched by OR specification for the item of the matching data type in each document DB. That is, the condition for searching the character string type data “Ichiro” for the bibliographic information is (document name = “Ichiro”) OR (author = “Ichiro”) OR (remarks = “Ichiro”) for the document DB1. )) And the document DB
2 (handler = “Ichiro”), and the document DB 3
(Book name = "Ichiro") OR (publisher = "Ichiro") OR (author = "Ichiro") OR (publisher = "Ichiro"). The same applies to date-type data and numeric-type data. For bibliographic information of each document DB, a search condition is set so that the corresponding item becomes OR for date-type items and numeric-type items. .

FIG. 8 is a flow chart for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention. Hereinafter, the operation of the first embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. First, for example, in the information processing apparatus 1a, a user selects a document search menu, whereby the search command issuing unit 11 displays a search condition setting menu, and obtains search conditions such as designated bibliographic information (step S1). Further, the search command issuing unit 11 obtains the number of registered document DBs and the address list thereof (step S2), and proceeds to step S2 by the number of document DBs.
4 to 7 are executed. That is, if the beginning of the address list is this information processing device 1a, the search command issuing unit 11 issues a command to the document search unit 12, and the document search unit 12 reads the bibliographic information from the document storage device 3 in the information processing device 1a. Is read, and each item of the bibliographic information is classified according to the data type (step S4) (this classification processing may be performed in advance). Subsequently, the document search unit 12 sets the specified search bibliographic information as search conditions for the bibliographic information of the items classified into the specified data type (step S5), and sets the bibliographic information in the document DB. (Step S6). If there are a plurality of search conditions, steps S5 and S6 are repeated by the number of search conditions, and the search result management unit 13
Summarizes the search results for each search condition and stores the search results in the search result storage unit 14 or a predetermined file (step S
7). Next, the search command issuing unit 11 obtains the address of the next document DB in the address list, and searches the information processing device (for example, the information processing device 1b) at that address with search condition information such as search bibliographic information. Make a request. Then, in the information processing device 1b, steps S4 to S4 are performed.
S6 is executed, and the search result compiled for each search condition is passed to the information processing apparatus 1a. Thus, the search result management unit 13 in the information processing device 1a stores the search result in the search result storage unit 14
Alternatively, it is stored in a predetermined file (step S7). After the Loop process is repeated for the number of document DBs (Yes in step S3), the search results of all the document DBs are combined (merged) (step S8), and the OR between the search conditions (items) is specified according to the specification. Alternatively, AND is obtained (step S9) (to be described in detail later), and the obtained search result is displayed on the display device 6 (step S10).

FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram for explaining the OR or AND processing executed in step S9.
As shown in FIG. 9, in this process, the loop from step S12 on is executed a number of times (the number of items minus 1) determined by the number of items, that is, the number of search bibliographic information (the number of search conditions). That is, first, it is determined whether the process between items is AND or OR (step S12). If the process is AND (Yes in step S12), the search results merged for each item (for each search condition) The items are compared to extract common document identification information (step S13). Also,
If it is OR (No in step S12), the document identification information in the two items is combined (merged), and only one of the duplicated document identification information is left (step S1).
4). And if there is a third item, the above result and 3
The same processing is repeated for the first item, and the same is repeated for the fourth and subsequent items. Thus, in the first embodiment, even when a document search is performed across a plurality of document management systems having different formats of bibliographic information, the specification of the search bibliographic information (search condition) only needs to be performed once. .

Next, another embodiment of the present invention will be described. In this embodiment, the search result is used for the next search. Therefore, even when the search is completed, the search result is kept stored in the file. The identification information (document 1, document 2, etc.) of the search target document is stored for each document DB indicated by the identification information (document DB1, document DB2, etc.) and for each search condition (search bibliographic information). FIG. 10 shows a configuration example of the file. As described above, the search result is held, and the number of accesses to the document DB is reduced by using the held search result unless the search condition is changed. Hereinafter, description will be made using an example. (1) First search Character string type search condition (search bibliographic information) "Design" Date type search condition (search bibliographic information) "October 1 to 19, 1999
When "99/10/30" is performed for document DB1 to document DB3, in the example shown in FIG. 4, character string search of document DB1 ... (S1) character string search of document DB2 ... (S2 Character string search in document DB3 (S3) Date search in document DB1 (S4) Date search in document DB2 (S5) Five searches are performed, and the search results are stored. After that, change the date type search condition and perform the second search (2) Second search Character string type search condition "design" (no change from the first time) Date type search condition "1999 / 4/1-10/30/1999 "In the case of the second search condition, if the same procedure is performed as in the first search, five searches will be performed and the search results will be stored. Since there is no change in the column type search condition,
As the search results of (S1), (S2), and (S3), those obtained at the first time are used. Therefore, in the second search, only the date search of the document DB1 (S4 ') and the date search of the document DB2 (S5') need be executed.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the second embodiment of the present invention. The operation of the second embodiment will be described below with reference to FIG. First, for example, in the information processing apparatus 1a, in a state where the document search is selected, the search command issuing unit 11 displays a search condition setting menu to obtain search conditions such as designated bibliographic information (step S21). Further, it is determined whether or not this search is the first search after the document search menu is selected (step S22). And if it is not the first time (step S
(No in 22) The previous search condition is compared with the current search condition, and the search condition is divided into the changed search item and the unchanged search item (step S23). The process may proceed to step S23 at any time without determining whether it is the first time. Thus, for the item that has been changed (Yes in step S24), the above-described search is performed for each document DB (step S25), and the search result is stored (step S26). For the items that have not been changed (No in step S24), the stored search results are acquired (step S27). Then, in step S25, the newly searched search result and the stored search result are combined to obtain a search result that satisfies the specified search condition, and the search result is displayed (step S28). Thus, in this embodiment, the amount of search processing is reduced, and a high-speed search is made possible accordingly. In each of the above embodiments, when specifying the search condition, the search bibliographic information is specified in association with the item of the bibliographic information, and among the plurality of document management systems, at least the document management system used when specifying the search condition is described. It is also possible to search for only items whose bibliographic information items match. In such a configuration, for example, when a search condition is specified in the information processing apparatus 1 corresponding to the document DB 1 shown in FIG. 4, the search command issuing unit 11 in the information processing apparatus A search condition is specified in association with items of bibliographic information such as a document name and a creator. And
With respect to the document DB in the information processing apparatus to which this designation has been made, the document search unit 12 searches for only the designated bibliographic information item, and for other information processing apparatuses, The data type stored in association with the item is acquired, and a search request is issued by indicating a pair of the data type and the search bibliographic information. Thus, in such a configuration, the number of search processing targets is reduced for one document management system, and the load is reduced accordingly. Further, it is possible to obtain a machine-readable storage medium storing a program for executing the above-described document search method according to the present invention. By reading the program stored in this storage medium into the information processing apparatus and executing the program, the document search method according to the present invention can be implemented.

[0011]

As described above, according to the first aspect of the present invention, a plurality of items of bibliographic information stored in association with each stored document content are designated as search conditions. An item having a data type that matches the searched bibliographic information is set as a search target, and a document having bibliographic information that matches the specified search bibliographic information is searched for across the plurality of document management systems. Therefore, even when a document search is performed on a plurality of document management systems having different formats of bibliographic information, the search bibliographic information need only be specified once. According to the invention described in claim 2, in the invention described in claim 1, the search bibliographic information and the search result information are stored in association with each other,
When performing a search again, only search bibliographic information different from the stored search bibliographic information is searched out of search bibliographic information specified as a search condition, and a part of the specified search bibliographic information is stored. If the search result information is included in the search bibliographic information, the search result information at the time of the search is created again using the stored search result information and the newly performed search result information, so that the time required for the search is reduced. . Further, according to the invention described in claim 3, according to claim 1 or claim 2
In the invention described in (1), when the search condition is specified, the search bibliographic information is specified in association with the item of the bibliographic information.
Of the plurality of document management systems, at least the document management system used when designating the search condition is searched for only the item whose bibliographic information item matches, so that the time required for the search is further reduced. According to the fourth aspect of the present invention, it is possible to obtain a machine-readable storage medium storing a program for executing the document search method according to the first to third aspects. By reading and executing the stored program in the information processing apparatus, the effects of the inventions according to claims 1 to 3 can be obtained.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a document management system that implements a document management method according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an information processing apparatus of the document management system in FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is another explanatory diagram for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is another explanatory diagram for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is another explanatory diagram for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is another explanatory diagram for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is another flowchart for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram for explaining a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart for explaining a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 12 is another explanatory diagram for explaining the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram showing a conventional document management system.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 information processing device, 2 search processing unit, 3 document storage device, 4 system control unit, 5 communication control unit, 6 display device, 7 input device, 11 search command issuing unit, 12 document search unit, 13 search result management unit, 14 Search result storage unit.

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A document search method for performing a document search on a plurality of document management systems having different forms of bibliographic information, wherein a plurality of items of bibliographic information stored in association with each stored document content Search for documents having bibliographic information that matches the specified search bibliographic information across a plurality of document management systems, with items whose data type matches the search bibliographic information specified as the search condition among the search targets A document search method characterized by the following. 2. The document search method according to claim 1, wherein the search bibliographic information and the search result information are stored in association with each other, and when the search is performed again, the search bibliographic information specified as the search condition is used. Searching only for search bibliographic information that is different from the stored search bibliographic information, and if a part of the designated search bibliographic information is in the stored search bibliographic information, the stored search result information A document search method characterized by generating search result information at the time of search again using the search result information and newly performed search result information. 3. The document search method according to claim 1, wherein when designating the search condition, the search bibliographic information is designated in association with the bibliographic information item, and A document search method characterized in that at least a document management system used when designating search conditions is searched for only items whose bibliographic information items match. 4. A machine-readable storage medium storing a program for executing the document search method according to claim 1. Description: