JP2007241692A - Server device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a technique for efficiently generating a web page from the data of a database to be appropriately updated. <P>SOLUTION: The server unit 100 is a unit for generating the web page from content data appropriately updated in the database 30. A module control part 124 allocates a region processing module 140 to each of a plurality of regions laid out on the web page, a web page generation part 126 generates the web page as a whole from partial web pages generated by the respective region processing modules, and a client communication part 110 transmits the web page to a client terminal 10. The region processing module 140 generates the partial web page by acquiring the content data to be a display object in the corresponding region from the database. The validity of data is managed with the partial web page as a unit. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a web system technology, and more particularly to a technology for providing a web page including a plurality of types of content data.

  In recent years, with the spread of computers and the development of network technology, the exchange of electronic information via the network has become popular. As a result, many of the business processes that have been conventionally performed on a paper basis are being replaced by network-based processes.

Many commercial transactions are shifting to so-called electronic commerce via networks, and recently various electronic commerce sites have been established on the Internet. The user can acquire not only the price, function, and stock status of the product but also various information such as competing products, related products, and top-selling rankings through a web page provided by the electronic commerce site. The abundance of product information that can be acquired from web pages is considered to be a cause of the spread of electronic commerce.
JP-A-10-78904

The web page of an electronic commerce site usually contains data acquired from many databases. For example, a database that stores information on a product A and a database that stores information on another product B may be different. Further, the information regarding the price of the product A and the information regarding the stock of the product A may be stored in different databases. Electronic commerce sites collect web page content from a number of databases with different update frequencies.
In web page generation processing, access to a database tends to be a bottleneck. For this reason, the number of databases to be accessed and the increase in the number of accesses have become factors that deteriorate the performance of the entire electronic commerce system.

  The present invention has been made in view of such circumstances, and a main object thereof is to provide a technique for efficiently generating a web page from data in a database that is updated as appropriate.

One embodiment of the present invention is a server device that generates a web page from content data that is appropriately updated in a database.
This apparatus assigns an area processing module to each of a plurality of areas laid out on a web page, generates a web page as a whole from partial web pages generated by each area processing module, and transmits it to a client terminal .
The area processing module acquires content data to be displayed in the corresponding area from the database, generates a partial web page, and holds this. For this partial web page, for example, a condition for managing the validity of data such as an expiration date is set, and this condition must be satisfied when the web page is transmitted to the client terminal. For example, content data is reacquired and a partial web page is regenerated.

  It should be noted that any combination of the above-described components and a representation of the present invention by a method, apparatus, system, recording medium, and computer program are also effective as an aspect of the present invention.

  ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, the technique for producing | generating a web page efficiently from the data of the database updated suitably can be provided.

  In the present embodiment, a description will be given of a server device 100 that collects various data from an external database group and provides a web page having these data as contents.

FIG. 1 is a hardware configuration diagram of a client server system according to the present embodiment.
The server apparatus 100 is connected to a plurality of databases (hereinafter simply referred to as “database 30”) such as the database 30a, the database 30b, and the database 30c. The server device 100 is connected to a plurality of client terminals (hereinafter simply referred to as “client terminal 10”) such as the client terminal 10a, the client terminal 10b, and the client terminal 10c via the Internet 20.

In response to a request from the client terminal 10, the server device 100 transmits a web page file (hereinafter simply referred to as “web page”) in a format described in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) or XML (eXtensible Markup Language). . This web page includes static content and dynamic content. The static content referred to in the present embodiment is static information held by the server device 100. On the other hand, dynamic content is dynamically changing information held in each database 30. The server apparatus 100 generates a web page including various content data based on predetermined frame data that defines the style of the web page.
Next, a problem in the process of generating a web page from dynamic content and a solution proposed in this embodiment will be described.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram for explaining a general processing method for creating a web page from dynamic content.
Here, it is assumed that the client terminal 10a specifies the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to the server apparatus 100 and requests the web page A. The interface 70 of the server apparatus 100 accepts this web page acquisition request and instructs the web page generation program 40 to generate the web page A. The web page generation program 40 accesses each database 30 to collect dynamic content and generates a web page A. Further, the web page generation program 40 stores the generated web page A in the cache 50. The interface 70 transmits the web page A thus generated to the requesting client terminal 10a. The web page generation program 40 is often realized by a Java (registered trademark) component such as a servlet or JSP (JavaServer Pages).
Of course, this web page may include static content held by the server apparatus 100 itself.

  Next, it is assumed that another client terminal 10b requests the web page A from the server device 100 again. When the interface 70 of the server apparatus 100 accepts the web page acquisition request, the web page generation program 40 is requested to generate the web page A. At this time, since the web page A generated by the previous process is already in the cache 50, the web page generation program 40 passes the web page A in the cache 50 to the interface 70. As a result, the second access to the database 30 by the web page generation program 40 is unnecessary due to the cache of the web page A. Thus, the number of accesses from the web page generation program 40 to the database 30 is suppressed due to the presence of the cache 50.

  However, since the content data in each database 30 is updated as appropriate, the web page A in the cache 50 is not always valid data. For example, in a situation where the web page A including product information valid until “January 10, 2005” is cached, if a web page acquisition request is received for the web page A on January 11, 2005, the web page A The page generation program 40 needs to acquire the latest product information from the database 30 and regenerate the web page A.

In other words, in order for the web page cache system to function well, it is desirable that the web pages held in the cache 50 be valid for as long as possible. However, when content data is acquired from a large number of databases 30, the valid period of the cached web page is also shortened. For example, in the case of a web page including stock information that is frequently updated as content data, the cache system hardly functions effectively.
The server device 100 according to the present embodiment divides a web page into a plurality of areas, and copes with such problems by data management for each area.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram for explaining a processing method for creating a web page from dynamic content in the present embodiment.
First, the display style of the web page is defined by the frame data 60. In the case of this figure, this web page is divided into seven areas A1 to A7. Then, area processing modules indicated as P1 to P7 are assigned to each area. As will be described in detail later, the area processing module generates a partial web page (hereinafter referred to as “partial data”) corresponding to the area. For example, the area processing module P1 generates partial data for the area A1. It can be said that the area processing module is a small version of the web page generation program 40 described with reference to FIG.

  The area processing module P1 acquires content data to be displayed in the area A1 from the database A. Therefore, the area processing module P1 is associated with the database A. Similarly, the area processing module P4 acquires content data from the databases A and B, and generates partial data corresponding to the area A4. Each area processing module independently caches the generated partial data.

This will be described more specifically by taking as an example a web page of an electronic commerce site that sells CDs and books. Here, the database A stores CD inventory information. Database B stores product information about CDs. Database C stores product information about books. The area A1 is an area indicating the stock status of the Western music CD. Therefore, the area processing module P1 acquires information on the inventory status of the Western music CD from the database A and generates partial data. A region A2 shows product information about a recently released CD. The area processing module P2 is associated with the area A2. The area processing module P2 acquires the corresponding data from the database B. Area A4 shows the sales of a new CD of an artist. The area processing module P4 is associated with the area A4. The area processing module P4 acquires corresponding data from the database A and the database B.
Based on the frame data 60, a web page as a whole is generated by partial data generated by each area processing module.

Here, it is assumed that the CD inventory information is updated in the database A. At this time, partial data in the areas A1 and A4 related to the database A needs to be updated, but partial data in other areas need not be updated. Furthermore, the update contents of the database A may affect the area A4 even if it affects the area A1. As described above, the cache system can be functioned more efficiently by caching the web page in units of partial data. In the case of the processing method described with reference to FIG. 2, when the content data related to the database A is updated, the web page generation program 40 regenerates the entire web page. At this time, access to not only the database A but also the databases B to E as the database related to the web page occurs. On the other hand, according to the processing method related to FIG. 4, the data range to be updated in the web page can be limited, and as a result, unnecessary access to the database 30 can be easily suppressed.
Hereinafter, the server apparatus 100 according to the present embodiment will be described focusing on details of the web page generation method.

FIG. 4 is a functional block diagram of the server device in the present embodiment.
Each block shown here can be realized in hardware by an element such as a CPU of a computer or a mechanical device, and in software it is realized by a computer program or the like. Draw functional blocks. Therefore, those skilled in the art will understand that these functional blocks can be realized in various forms by a combination of hardware and software. The same applies to the next FIG.
Here, functions to be exhibited by each functional block will be mainly described, and specific actions will be described with reference to FIG.

The server device 100 includes a client communication unit 110, a web data processing unit 120, and an area processing unit 130.
The client communication unit 110 is in charge of communication processing with the client terminal 10. The client communication unit 110 receives a web page acquisition request from the client terminal 10 and transmits the corresponding web page to the client terminal 10.
The web data processing unit 120 comprehensively controls various data processing related to generation of a web page. The web data processing unit 120 also serves as an interface between the client communication unit 110 and the area processing unit 130.
The area processing unit 130 includes a plurality of area processing modules (hereinafter simply referred to as “area processing module 140”) such as an area processing module 140a, an area processing module 140b, and an area processing module 140c. Detailed functional blocks of the area processing module 140 will be described later with reference to FIG.

The web data processing unit 120 includes a frame selection unit 122, a module control unit 124, and a web page generation unit 126.
The frame selection unit 122 selects the frame data 60 for the web page requested from the client terminal 10. The frame selection unit 122 holds a plurality of types of frame data 60, and selects frame data based on the designated URL. The module control unit 124 assigns an area processing module 140 to each area of the selected frame data 60. Further, each area processing module 140 is comprehensively controlled and functions as an interface to the area processing module 140. The web page generation unit 126 generates a web page by laying out the partial data generated by the region processing module 140 based on the frame data 60 selected by the frame selection unit 122.

  Conditions (hereinafter referred to as “content validity conditions”) are set for the validity of the various content data held in the database 30. For example, the price for a product is different during the campaign period and not. It is assumed that price information that is valid only during the period “May 2001 to July 2003” is held in the database 30. In this case, if it is within the period of “May 2001 to July 2003”, the content validity condition for this price information is determined to be satisfied, and otherwise it is determined to be not satisfied.

The area processing module 140 also acquires content validity conditions when acquiring content data from the database 30. When a web page is transmitted to the client terminal 10, content valid conditions must be satisfied for all content data included in the web page. Therefore, a condition for data validity (hereinafter referred to as “partial data validity condition”) is also set for partial data cached in the area processing module 140. For example, when the partial data includes content data α, β, and γ, if the content validity condition is satisfied for all the content data, the partial data validity condition is determined to be satisfied; Hereinafter, when “content valid conditions” and “partial data valid conditions” are collectively referred to, they are simply referred to as “valid conditions”.
The effective condition will be described in detail with reference to FIG. 6 after the region processing module 140 is described in detail.

FIG. 5 is a functional block diagram of the area processing module.
The area processing module 140 includes a database communication unit 150, a partial data processing unit 160 and a data storage unit 170.
The database communication unit 150 is mainly responsible for communication processing with the database 30. The data storage unit 170 stores various data. The partial data processing unit 160 controls the generation of partial data. The partial data processing unit 160 also serves as an interface between the database communication unit 150 and the data storage unit 170 and an interface of the area processing module 140 with respect to the web data processing unit 120.

The database communication unit 150 includes a content acquisition unit 152, an update notification acquisition unit 154, and an effective condition setting command acquisition unit 156.
The content acquisition unit 152 acquires content data from the database 30. Depending on the database 30, there is also content data with severe freshness management that is updated irregularly such as inventory information. The database 30 has a function of transmitting an update notification to the server device 100 when specific content data such as inventory information is updated. The update notification acquisition unit 154 of each area processing module 140 receives such an update notification and determines whether it is an update notification from the database 30 having a correspondence relationship. If there is no correspondence, this update notification is ignored. Therefore, the update notification is processed only in the corresponding area processing module 140. The valid condition setting command acquisition unit 156 receives a valid condition setting command for changing the content valid condition and the partial data valid condition with respect to the held partial data from the external device. The external device here is a device connected to the Internet 20 and capable of controlling the server device 100 from a remote location.

The data storage unit 170 includes a partial data holding unit 172 and an effective condition holding unit 174.
The partial data holding unit 172 holds partial data. The effective condition holding unit 174 holds the effective condition. The data structure of the valid condition holding unit 174 will be described later.

The partial data processing unit 160 includes an effective condition setting unit 162, a partial data generation unit 164, and an update control unit 166.
When the valid condition setting command 162 is received, the valid condition setting unit 162 sets and changes the valid condition held in the valid condition holding unit 174 in accordance with the designated valid condition. The partial data generation unit 164 generates partial data based on the content data acquired from the content acquisition unit 152. At this time, various effective conditions in the effective condition holding unit 174 are also updated. The update control unit 166 updates the partial data in the partial data holding unit 172 when the partial data validity condition is not satisfied when the web page acquisition request is received or when an update notification is received.

FIG. 6 is a data structure diagram of the valid condition holding unit 174.
The content ID column 180 indicates a content ID for identifying content data. In the figure, three types of content data with content IDs “010”, “021”, and “004” are included in the corresponding partial data. The database ID column 182 indicates a database ID for identifying the database 30 from which each content is acquired. According to the figure, it can be seen that the content data with the content ID “010” and the content data with the content ID “004” are both acquired from the database 30 with the database ID “001”.

  The content valid condition column 184 shows the content valid condition for each content data. The content data with the content ID “010” is content data valid until October 31, 2005. Similarly, the content data with the content ID “004” is valid until November 16, 2008, and the content data with the content ID “021” is valid data in the period from 15:00 to 18:00. The partial data valid condition column 186 shows partial data valid conditions. The valid condition setting unit 162 compares the current time with each content valid condition and appropriately determines whether the partial data valid condition is successful. The determination result is held in the partial data valid condition column 186. In the case of the example shown here, the partial data valid condition is satisfied if it is a time period between 15:00 and 18:00 until October 31, 2005, and is not satisfied otherwise. Become. The valid condition can be changed by an instruction from an external device. For example, the valid condition of the content data with the content ID “010” can be changed later to “until September 31, 2005”.

  If a web page acquisition request is received when the partial data valid condition is satisfied, the partial data in the partial data holding unit 172 is used as it is. On the other hand, if not satisfied, the content acquisition unit 152 re-acquires content data for which the content validity condition is not satisfied. The partial data generation unit 164 regenerates the partial data based on the newly acquired content data. At this time, the content data valid condition for the newly acquired content data is updated.

  In this example, the partial data includes a plurality of types of content data. However, if there is only one type of partial data included in each area, the content validity condition and the partial data validity condition match. Become.

  The valid condition is explicitly set for the database 30 by the content data manager. When the content acquisition unit 152 acquires content data from the database 30, it also acquires a valid condition for the content data. The valid condition setting command acquisition unit 156 sets the valid condition acquired at this time in the content valid condition column 184. However, the effective condition is not necessarily limited to the case where the success or failure is determined by the time zone. For example, “when the weather forecast for the next day is rainy”, “when the Nikkei average stock price exceeds 15,000 yen”, “when access is from a VIP user”, and so on, In response, the partial data may be updated. Information for determining such an effective condition may be acquired from another website via the Internet 20. As described above, there are various variations regarding the setting method and setting contents of the effective condition.

The partial data is also updated when an update notification is received separately from the valid condition. The update control unit 166 causes the content acquisition unit 152 to re-acquire content data to be updated, and causes the partial data generation unit 164 to re-generate partial data.
The area processing module 140 manages the partial data by active management based on the valid condition and passive management based on the update notification.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing a web page generation process.
Here, a description will be given assuming that the web page A is requested from the client terminal 10. First, the frame selection unit 122 selects the frame data 60 of the web page A (S10). If the area processing module 140 is not assigned to the web page A (NO in S12), the module control unit 124 assigns the area processing module 140 to each area (S14). In this case, the area processing module 140 is initialized in S14.

  Each area processing module 140 executes partial data processing in order to generate partial data for each area processing module 140 (S16). Each area processing module 140 can execute processing independently of each other. Therefore, the partial data processing is executed in parallel by each area processing module 140 in time. The partial data processing in S16 will be described in detail with reference to FIG. The web page generation unit 126 generates a web page by combining the partial data obtained from the area processing modules 140 (S18). The client communication unit 110 transmits a web page to the client terminal 10 (S20).

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing in detail the partial data processing in S16 of FIG.
If the partial data holding unit 172 has already held the partial data (YES in S30), the update control unit 166 determines whether the partial data valid condition is satisfied (S32). If the partial data valid condition is satisfied (YES in S32), the process skips to S40. When the partial data is not held or when the partial data validity condition is not satisfied (NO in S32), the update control unit 166 instructs the content acquisition unit 152 to transmit the content data from the database 30. Is acquired (S34). The partial data generation unit 164 generates partial data based on the newly acquired content data (S36). The valid condition setting unit 162 sets the content valid condition of the newly acquired content data in the valid condition holding unit 174 (S38). At this time, the partial data valid condition is also updated. The partial data processing unit 160 passes the generated partial data to the web data processing unit 120 (S40).

  In this manner, each area processing module 140 generates partial data as appropriate, thereby generating a web page as a whole. Since each area processing module 140 can execute partial data processing in parallel in time, web page generation processing becomes more efficient. In particular, even when the number of databases 30 is large, the plurality of databases 30 can be accessed in parallel in time, so that the processing efficiency of the entire system can be further increased. Since the server apparatus 100 can almost delegate basic processing to the area processing module 140 after selecting the frame data 60 and assigning the area processing module 140, it is excellent in system expandability.

The present invention has been described above based on the embodiment. The present invention is not limited to this embodiment, and various modifications thereof are also effective as aspects of the present invention. For example, in the present embodiment, description has been made assuming an electronic commerce site. However, the application range of the present invention is effective in generating a web page including content obtained from a plurality of databases such as a web page of a portal site. is there.
In addition, the present invention can also be applied to business-to-business transactions and message exchange processing via XML.

The function of the web page data transmission unit described in the claims is mainly realized by the client communication unit 110 in this embodiment. The frame data holding unit described in the claims is mainly realized by the frame selection unit 122 in this embodiment.
It should also be understood by those skilled in the art that the functions to be fulfilled by the constituent elements described in the claims are realized by the individual functional blocks shown in the present embodiment or their linkage.

Finally, as a modified example, a mode in which a partial display management function is added to the server apparatus 100 shown in the present embodiment will be added.
FIG. 9 is a data structure diagram of the valid condition holding unit 174 in this modification.
Here, it is assumed that the frame data 60 includes seven areas A1 to A7 as shown in FIG. The partial data valid condition column 186 indicates the partial data valid condition for each area as shown in FIG. In the present modification, a partial data display condition 192 is further added and a partial data display condition is set. In this partial data display condition 192, the circle A, that is, the area A1 and the area A7 where the partial data display condition is set to ON are displayed, but the OFF setting area A2 with a cross is set to Not subject to display. The partial data display condition is set by the user of the server device 100. The user can control the data to be actually displayed on the web page by accessing the server device 100 by setting the partial data display condition. For example, when wrong data is originally stored in the database and such data is loaded as a display target of the area A2, the operator of the server apparatus 100 turns off the partial data display condition of the area A2. Such inappropriate data can be immediately excluded from the display target. In this case, static content prepared in advance as an advertisement may be replaced and displayed in the area A2.

  According to the figure, since the partial data display condition of the area A1 is on, the area A1 is a display target. In this modification, the display conditions of the area A1 can be set more finely. The data structure diagram shown in the lower part of FIG. 9 shows the content ID included in the area A1 and the corresponding database ID. Here, the content display condition 198 indicates a content display condition for setting whether or not to display each content data. In the figure, the content display conditions for content IDs “010” and “021” are on, but the content ID “004” is off. Therefore, the content data with the content ID “004” in the area A1 is not displayed. As described above, the user of the server device 100 can also set display permission for each content in each area. The server apparatus 100 includes a user interface processing unit for the user to set each display condition. The user can set the display condition of the effective condition holding unit 174 via such a user interface processing unit. The web page generation unit 126 determines the content of the web page to be finally transmitted to the client terminal 10 in view of the setting state of the partial data display condition and the content display condition.

It is a hardware block diagram of the client server system in a present Example. It is a schematic diagram for demonstrating the general processing method which produces a web page from dynamic content. It is a schematic diagram for demonstrating the processing method which produces a web page from a dynamic content in a present Example. It is a functional block diagram of the server apparatus in a present Example. It is a functional block diagram of an area processing module. It is a data structure figure of an effective condition holding part. It is a flowchart which shows a web page production | generation process. It is a flowchart which shows the partial data process in S16 of FIG. 7 in detail. It is a data structure figure of the effective condition holding | maintenance part in a modification.

Explanation of symbols

  10 client terminal, 20 internet, 30 database, 40 web page generation program, 60 frame data, 100 server device, 110 client communication unit, 120 web data processing unit, 122 frame selection unit, 124 module control unit, 126 web page generation unit , 130 region processing unit, 140 region processing module, 150 database communication unit, 152 content acquisition unit, 154 update notification acquisition unit, 156 valid condition setting command acquisition unit, 160 partial data processing unit, 162 valid condition setting unit, 164 partial data A generation unit, 166 update control unit, 170 data storage unit, 172 partial data holding unit, 174 effective condition holding unit.

Claims (5)

An apparatus for generating a web page from content data updated as appropriate in a database,
An area processing module that is set corresponding to each of a plurality of areas laid out on a web page and generates partial data that is partial web page data for the corresponding area;
A web page data generation unit that generates web page data as a whole from the partial data generated by each area processing module;
A web page data transmitting unit that transmits the web page data as a whole to the client terminal,
The region processing module includes:
A content acquisition unit that acquires content data to be displayed in a corresponding area from the database;
A partial data generation unit that generates partial data from the acquired content data;
A partial data holding unit for holding partial data;
An effective condition holding unit for holding an effective condition for the partial data to be valid data to be transmitted to the client terminal;
When the valid condition is satisfied when transmitting the web page data, the held partial data is set as a transmission target, and when the valid condition is not satisfied, the content acquisition unit is made to re-acquire the content data, An update controller that causes the data generator to regenerate partial data;
A server device comprising: A frame data holding unit for holding frame data for laying out a plurality of areas on the web page;
The server apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the area processing module is associated with each area laid out by frame data. The region processing module includes:
The server device according to claim 1, further comprising an effective condition setting unit configured to change the effective condition according to an instruction from an external device.   4. The server device according to claim 1, wherein the update control unit of the region processing module causes the content acquisition unit to re-acquire the updated content data when receiving a database update notification. 5. .   The partial data holding unit of the area processing module holds the valid condition as a condition for designating a period during which the partial data is valid as a transmission target to the client terminal. The server apparatus according to the above.

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