JP2010010859A - Storage method of e-mail, and system therefor - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce a mail storage area capacity of a mail server when providing more convenient services to more users in a Web mail service. <P>SOLUTION: The mail server is provided with: a reception data comparison unit 5 which compares reception data of an electronic mail with stored mail data in a mail storage area 10 for an individual person up to the time when the electronic mail is received; a reference data creation unit 6 which creates a storage place in a mail storage area for the individual person of the same content data part as reference data when the reception data comparison unit detects the same content data; and a reception data storage unit 4 which discards the same content data part when the reception data comparison unit detects the same content data, inserts and records the reference data created by the reference data creation unit in a storage area of the discarded data, and stores it in a predetermined area of the mail storage area for the individual person. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an e-mail storage method and system for storing e-mail in a mail server.

  Conventionally, an electronic mail (hereinafter referred to as “e-mail”) delivered to oneself is generally downloaded by a message from a distribution server to an information terminal such as a personally owned computer. However, this method has a problem that it is necessary to always carry a personal information terminal in order to view the contents of the e-mail.

  In the above method, it is necessary to connect the information terminal to the distribution server in order to receive a new e-mail. In consideration of safety, it is necessary to take some countermeasures such as permitting connection to the distribution server only from within the network where the security is confirmed. Therefore, when the user is in a network environment outside the permitted range, there has been a problem that new e-mails cannot be received and viewed.

  In order to solve these problems, a service for storing e-mails on a mail server and browsing mails to users using a Web (world wide web: WWW) interface that is freely connected to the network, that is, Web mail A service or free mail service was devised. With this service, a user can log in to a mail server through an authentication based on a combination of a user name and a password distributed to each person through a Web interface, and browse an e-mail addressed to an individual. In this case, since the e-mail is stored in the mail server, the information terminal operated by the user can be any terminal as long as it has a web interface and web communication means. There is no need to carry the information terminal. Moreover, since the communication means for Web is designed in consideration of access from an unspecified number of people, there is no need to limit the connection source in order to ensure the safety of the mail server. There is an advantage that the latest e-mail can be viewed even in a network environment.

  The above services have such excellent advantages when viewed from the user side, but when viewed from the service provider side, a large storage area is provided for storing e-mails addressed to all users. The problem of having to occur arises. In the above service, the e-mail stored in the server is stored in an area divided for each user. Therefore, the service provider must prepare a storage area having a capacity obtained by multiplying the storage area capacity for each user set by the service provider by the number of users. That is, in order to provide services to more users, the storage area capacity must be expanded in proportion to the number of users. In addition, in order to improve the quality of service and increase user satisfaction, it is necessary to increase the storage area capacity for each user as much as possible. This also causes an increase in the storage area capacity to be secured. Increasing storage capacity increases the cost of providing services. As described above, the conventional method has a problem in that an attempt to provide a higher quality service to more users causes an explosive increase in cost.

  This problem has become more serious in recent years due to several factors. One of them is the so-called “junk mail”. The junk mail is an e-mail transmitted to a large number of e-mail addresses obtained by some method or randomly generated. Spam mail has the characteristic that e-mails with the same text containing commercial advertisements and the like are transmitted to a large number of destinations. There is software for determining whether an e-mail is spam, but it is not perfect, and the mail service provider falls into a situation where it seems that it is spam and a large amount of e-mail presses the storage space. Even so, it is up to each user to decide whether or not to delete the email. Even in a situation where a large amount of junk mail is distributed, in order to allow a user to browse a truly necessary e-mail with the Web mail service, the capacity of the mail server storage area must still be increased.

  Another factor is that large-sized files have come to be attached as data attached to e-mails, so-called “attached files”. In recent years, multimedia devices such as digital cameras and digital video cameras have been widely used. Moreover, recent personal computers have high performance that can easily handle multimedia data created by these devices. As a result, these multimedia data have been exchanged on a daily basis as email attachments. In general, the size of multimedia data is very large, but the size of data is further increased due to the recent remarkable improvement in image quality of digital cameras, digital video cameras, and the like. For this reason, the e-mail attached with the multimedia data is one of the factors that press the storage area capacity of the mail server.

  As a factor that compresses the storage area capacity of the mail server, there is a problem of full-text citation in the reply of the e-mail. For example, as shown in FIG. 1, a reply mail for a received e-mail is often created by leaving the full text of the original e-mail as a quote at the end of the text. In this method, each time an e-mail is exchanged, the body text grows larger, and the storage area capacity of the mail server that must store them is squeezed.

  As an improvement measure for the user terminal, for example, there is a technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-194617 (Patent Document 1). In Patent Document 1, when receiving an e-mail, duplicate mail contents included in a reply or the like are detected, and the duplicate mail contents are deleted from the e-mail storage area. Specifically, when the “subject” portion of the mail matches as “Re:...”, The function is executed.

  Also, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-32307 (Patent Document 2), for a received mail in which a mail server has an attached file, the mail text and the summary information of the attached file are sent to the receiving terminal and sent from the receiving side. Only when a request is received, the mail storage area capacity of the user terminal is reduced by transmitting the attached file.

  These measures for reducing the capacity of the mail storage area are for the terminal on the user side, and are not intended for reducing the capacity of the mail storage area in the above-described mail server, particularly the WEB mail service.

JP 2000-194617 A JP 2003-32307 A

  The problem to be solved is to be borne by the service provider because the mail storage area capacity of the mail server increases when trying to provide a more convenient service to more users with the Web mail service. The problem is that the cost increases explosively.

  Since the communication means for Web is designed in consideration of connections from an unspecified number, no connection restriction is provided for the network. That is, the user of the Web mail service can view the latest mail from any network environment. Therefore, it is necessary to store all mail addressed to the user on the server. Therefore, the service provider needs to prepare a storage area having a capacity sufficient to store all mails addressed to all users. The storage capacity allowed for each user can be set on the service provider side, but the larger the capacity, the better for the convenience of the user. The storage capacity for each user is proportional to the capacity of the storage area to be prepared by the provider. It is also proportional to the number of users. That is, an increase in the capacity of the mail storage area causes an increase in cost that the service provider should bear.

  The present invention solves such a problem and minimizes the increase in cost while keeping more e-mails in the storage area, so that the e-mail is stored in the personal mail storage area registered in the mail server. Accumulate based on data. Therefore, the mail server according to the present invention compares the data of the e-mail with the mail data accumulated so far when receiving the e-mail, and discards the same content data portion when the same content data is detected. The storage location of the same content data detected in the storage area for the discarded data is recorded and accumulated as reference data.

  The e-mail storage method and system according to the present invention, when the mail server receives the e-mail, compares the e-mail data with the e-mail data accumulated so far, and detects the same content data. Discards the same data part. Therefore, the entity data is stored in the personal mail storage area only when the same content data does not already exist in the personal mail storage area, and the reference and metadata for instructing the entity data for each user. Therefore, the storage area capacity for storing the e-mail can be reduced as compared with the conventional case.

  In other words, while using a storage area with the same capacity as before, more e-mails can be stored in the storage area, while using a storage area with a smaller capacity than before, e-mail with the same amount as before Can be stored in the storage area.

  The purpose of storing more e-mails in the storage area using the same storage area as before is to store the e-mail data before the e-mail server accepts the e-mail. Compared with the stored mail data, the data portion having the same contents is discarded, and only the actual data that has not existed so far is stored in the storage area, thereby realizing the conventional personal mail storage area without damaging it. In the discarded portion, reference data for instructing entity data is stored in an area corresponding to the metadata. This comparison target mail data may be limited to the personal mail storage area of the user. That is, the data other than the user himself / herself has an enormous amount of data to be compared, and the data indicating the reference destination is discarded by the intention other than himself / herself.

  Embodiments will be described below with reference to the drawings. The description is an example, and as long as the functions described in the scope of claims of the present invention are satisfied, changes such as separation and consolidation of function blocks and replacement of the procedure before and after can be freely performed. It is not limited.

  A first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 2 and 3 together with FIG.

  Although the “electronic mail” text in FIG. 1 has already been described, it will be described again later. In this embodiment, it is assumed that the entire text of the received text is quoted when replying.

  FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a mail server according to the present invention in blocks. FIG. 2 shows a mail reception unit 1, a mail decomposition unit 2, a level analysis unit 3, a reception data storage unit 4, a reception data comparison unit 5, a reference data generation unit 6, and a personal mail storage area 10. The personal mail storage area 10 is provided for each individual as a storage area for personal mail data, and generally has a plurality of areas corresponding to metadata. That is, each personal mail storage area 10 has a hierarchy of metadata (storage area) 11, body (storage area) 12, and attached file (storage area) 13, and the body (storage area). 12 shows citation levels 0 to 2 for each of citation level 0 (storage area) 120 to citation level 2 (storage area) 122. The attached file (storage area) 13 includes file 1 and file 2, file 1 (storage area) 131 and file 2 (storage area) 132 are shown. It is assumed that mail data for both transmission and reception is stored and accumulated in a plurality of personal mail storage areas so as to be identifiable by supporting metadata.

  In this embodiment, it is assumed that the mail server in FIG. 2 accepts the electronic mail (hereinafter referred to as e-mail) shown in FIG. 1 from the network.

  First, the “e-mail” text in FIG. 1 will be described.

  The illustrated e-mail is a reply to another e-mail having “quotation level 0” as the body and “quotation level 1” and “quotation level 2” as the body. Further, “quotation level 1” and “quotation level 2” are replies to e-mails having “quotation level 2” as the text. As shown in the figure, a symbol or a blank space, in this example, “> (inequality sign)” is added to the beginning of the quoted portion. This is called a quotation mark, and is added to distinguish the quoted part from the part written by the sender of the email. The number of quotation marks at the beginning of a line increases according to the number of citations, that is, the citation level. That is, it is possible to divide the full-text citation part into blocks according to the number of quotes at the beginning of the line, and to determine the citation level of each block. In the e-mail example shown in the figure, the text is broken down into three blocks of “citation level 0”, “citation level 1”, and “citation level 2”.

  Next, each component in FIG. 2 will be described.

  The mail receiving unit 1 receives an e-mail via a network. The mail decomposing unit 2 receives the e-mail received by the mail receiving unit 1 and decomposes it into metadata, a body text, and an attached file, and the metadata is stored in the metadata 11 area of the personal mail storage area 10. The text is sent to the level analysis unit 3, and the attached file is sent to the reception data storage unit 4. The level analysis unit 3 receives the text decomposed by the mail decomposition unit 2 and analyzes and decomposes it to the citation level as shown in FIG.

  The reception data storage unit 4 first receives and temporarily stores the data for each citation level of the text decomposed according to the citation level by the level analysis unit 3 and the attached file decomposed by the mail decomposition unit 2, and receives the received data. The data is sent to the data comparison unit 5. There may be no attached file. The received data storage unit 4 receives the reference data for the discarded data because it is the same data as the comparison result from the received data comparison unit 5, so that the unmatched entity data and the discarded reference data are for personal use. In addition to the metadata storage area recorded first in the mail storage area 10, it is stored and accumulated.

  The received data comparison unit 5 compares the received body text and attached file in the corresponding area of the personal mail storage area 10 and designates the part to be discarded with the same content data and the area where the actual data of this data is stored The location data to be sent is sent to the reference data generation unit 6 and the return of the reference data is accepted. The reference data generation unit 6 forms reference data from the data received from the reception data comparison unit 5 so that the data of the discard part can be extracted from the location data in the storage area, and returns the reference data to the reception data comparison unit 5. Reference refers to information for uniquely pointing to certain entity data stored in the storage area, such as a number assigned to each entity data without duplication.

  The metadata (storage area) 11 accepts and stores the metadata part for each e-mail decomposed by the mail decomposing unit 2 as actual data. The text (storage area) 12 stores the decomposed data of the text received from the received data storage unit 4 for each citation level, and the reference data if there is reference data.

  That is, the text (storage area) 12 is divided into citation level 0 (storage area) 120, citation level 1 (storage area) 121, and citation level 2 (storage area) 122, and citation level 1 (storage area) 121. In the citation level 2 (storage area) 122, reference data to entity data corresponding to the text of each citation level is normally stored. Each reference data is generated and acquired by the reference data generation unit 6. In FIG. 1, only up to citation level 2 is illustrated, but the number of citation levels in the body (storage area) 12 can be determined by the corresponding e-mail up to how many levels. Depending on Taka.

  The attached file (storage area) 13 stores the attached file received from the received data storage unit 4 or its reference data. The inside of the attached file (storage area) 13 is divided into a file 1 (storage area) 131 and a file 2 (storage area) 132. These are stored in the attached file (storage area) 13 and reference data to entity data corresponding to each attached file is stored. Each reference data is generated and acquired by the reference data generation unit 6. Although only file 2 is illustrated in FIG. 1, the number of file storage areas in the attached file storage area depends on how many files are attached to the corresponding e-mail.

  As a result, entity data and reference data that do not exist so far are stored in the storage area. That is, the body data is stored in the body (storage area) 12 for the text extracted from the received e-mail and the attachment file (storage area) 13 for the attached file data.

  Next, the main procedure of the mail server according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2 together with the flowchart of FIG. That is, a storage process when a mail server providing a web mail service receives an e-mail addressed to a certain user will be described. As described above, the personal mail storage area 10 is a storage area corresponding to one mail for the user.

  First, the mail reception unit 1 sends the e-mail to the mail decomposition unit 2 when receiving the e-mail (procedure S1). The mail decomposing unit 2 decomposes the e-mail into three parts of “metadata, body text, and attached file” (step S2). Metadata is data that is added to parts other than the body of the e-mail, such as sender, date, etc., and needs to be stored in each e-mail even if the e-mail has the same content. Usually, the size of the metadata is much smaller than the body of the email and the attached file. Accordingly, the personal mail storage area 10 is a storage area corresponding to one mail for the user.

  Next, the mail disassembling unit 2 stores and stores the disassembled “metadata” in the metadata (storage region) 11 of the personal mail storage region 10 (step S3), and converts the text into the level analysis unit 3 and the attached file. If there is, the attached file is sent to the reception data storage unit 4 respectively. The email shown in FIG. 1 is a full text citation. Full-text quoting is the full-text of the email from which the email was sent as a reply. This is done on a daily basis for the purpose of leaving an exchange history. In that case, the level analysis unit 3 analyzes the decomposed body part and decomposes the block of the full text citation for each citation level (step S4).

  In addition to “>”, “pipe” or “space” may be used as the quotation mark. However, first, a block without a special symbol at the beginning of a line is extracted as a citation level “0”, and then the entire citation level is lowered, that is, the part of the citation level “0” is deleted, and a symbol is extracted from the beginning of each line. If the operation of removing one character is performed recursively, it is possible to easily extract a block for each citation level regardless of the citation symbol.

  Next, the text decomposed for each citation level in the level analysis unit 3 is sent to the reception data comparison unit 5 via the reception data storage unit 4, and is other than the personal mail storage area 10 in which the current data is stored. Is compared with the text already stored in the text storage area of the mail storage area. Here, when the same text as the text extracted from the received e-mail is not stored in the text storage area of the mail storage area (step S5 is NO), the text extracted from the received e-mail is the entity data. Newly stored and stored in the body (storage area) 12 (step S6).

  On the other hand, when the above step S5 is “YES” and the same text is stored in the text storage area of the mail storage area, it is not necessary to retain the actual data of the text extracted from the received e-mail. Therefore, the data extracted from the received e-mail is discarded (step S7), and the storage destination of the same data as the discarded data is formed and acquired as reference data (step S8). That is, the received data comparison unit 5 sends the discarded data and the data of the actual data storage destination to the reference data generation unit 6, receives the reference data generated by the reference data generation unit 6, and receives the comparison data 5 Send to.

  Next, the received data comparison unit 5 uses the entity data in the received data acquired in step S6 and the reference data corresponding to the discarded data acquired in step S8, and the area corresponding to the metadata (storage area) 11 of this mail. Are stored and stored (step S9).

  As described above, for example, in the case of the email of FIG. 1, only the text of “quotation level 0” is stored as entity data, but each portion of “quotation level 1” and “quotation level 2” is another individual. Only the reference data indicating the “quotation level 0” storage area in which the same data in the email storage area is stored as a reference destination is stored. Usually, the reference data is small compared to the text data to be cited, so that the consumption of the storage area capacity can be suppressed much smaller than the conventional method of storing the entire email.

  When the received mail includes an attached file, the “attached file” portion decomposed by the mail decomposing unit 2 is sent to the received data comparing unit 5 via the received data storing unit 4 and is similar to the citation level of the text. Then, the procedure from the procedure S5 to the procedure S9 is executed. Therefore, even when there is the same data in the attached file storage area, as in the text, a significant saving of the storage area can be realized.

  In a service in which mail addressed to a user can be browsed using this system, when the personal mail storage area 10 is designated by the user, the entity data is output as it is, and the reference data storage area stores the reference data from the reference data. Is obtained, and the actual data is extracted therefrom and output to the user. That is, when a user tries to browse an email addressed to himself / herself, the metadata corresponding to the email to be browsed stored in the personal mail storage area 10 for the user and each Based on the reference data set, each reference data can be reconstructed by searching corresponding entity data and combining them without changing the metadata. Therefore, all e-mails can be displayed to the user through the Web interface.

  As described above, according to the present invention, when a plurality of e-mails with the same sentence are received, or when a plurality of e-mails with the same attached file are received, or a previously received e-mail is quoted in full text. When the received e-mail is received, the consumption of the storage area capacity can be suppressed much smaller than the conventional method of storing the entire e-mail. For this reason, the storage area of the Web mail server can be used with a smaller capacity than when the conventional method is used. Alternatively, if a storage area having the same capacity as the conventional one is used, the user can store more e-mails than before, and can provide the user with a higher quality service than before. That is, according to the present invention, it is possible to provide the same convenience to the user at a lower cost and to provide the user with a higher convenience than the conventional cost at the same cost as the conventional one. Is.

  In the above description, the text data that is discarded and used as reference data is the same text, but the same image is the same data in the attached file of the image.

  A second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. The difference from the above embodiment is that not only the reception data comparison unit 5 can determine the same, but also the similarity can be determined as the same content.

  In the above description, the text data to be discarded and used as reference data is the same text, but there may be similar texts. That is, when replying, it is usually possible to communicate the meaning with the text of citation level 0. For example, when the respondent quotes the text of the received mail, it may be extracted from the entity data at citation levels 1 and 2. is there. Therefore, even if the texts are compared, there is a case where they do not completely match, and there are some cases where reference data cannot be created. In this case, it is possible to refer to similar sentences by setting a predetermined standard. That is, the similarity can be determined by the software to be summarized in the document.

  Further, when the difference between the images is small, it is possible to measure the identity of the data, determine that the images are similar, and insert a similar mark for reference. Thereby, the storage area can be further reduced. In such a case, the degree of similarity can be leveled to, for example, 80% or more, 90% or more, and the like.

  The mail server compares the received mail with the mail data stored so far, and when the same part is detected, the same data is discarded and the reference data including the storage location is stored in the discarded part. Since the storage area of the mail data can be saved, the present invention can be widely applied to data storage systems that are assumed to store the same data without being limited to mail.

It is explanatory drawing which shows an example of the email containing a quote in the email main body. It is explanatory drawing which showed one Example of the storage system of the electronic mail by this invention in the block. (Examples 1 and 2) FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of an operation procedure of the e-mail storage system in FIG. 2 in a flowchart. (Example 1)

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Mail reception part 2 Mail decomposition part 3 Level analysis part 4 Reception data storage part 5 Reception data comparison part 6 Reference data generation part 10 Personal mail storage area 11 Metadata (storage area)
12 Text (Storage area)
13 Attached files (storage area)
120 Citation level 0 (storage area)
121 Citation level 1 (storage area)
122 Citation level 2 (storage area)
131 File 1 (storage area)
132 File 2 (storage area)

Claims (12)

  In the method of storing e-mail in the personal mail storage area registered in the mail server, when the mail server receives the e-mail, the e-mail data is compared with the mail data accumulated so far, and the same contents When the data is detected, the data portion of the same content is discarded, and the storage location of the same content data detected in the storage area of the discarded data is recorded and accumulated as reference data. Accumulation method.   2. The method for accumulating electronic mail according to claim 1, wherein the comparison part of the electronic mail is a text, and if there is an attached file, the file is also included.   2. The method for accumulating e-mail according to claim 1, wherein when the cited part is included in the body of the e-mail, the sentence of the same content is compared with the body having accumulated the cited part for each citation level. An e-mail storage method, wherein, when detected, a sentence having the same content is processed as the same data for each citation level.   4. The e-mail storage method according to claim 3, wherein in the personal e-mail storage area, the e-mail body storage area is divided and recorded for each citation level. .   4. The electronic mail storing method according to claim 1, wherein the same content includes any one of the same text that is completely matched and a similar text that matches a predetermined criterion when compared. A method for accumulating e-mails, comprising:   In a system for storing e-mails in the personal mail storage area registered with the mail server, when the mail server receives the e-mail, the e-mail data is compared with the e-mail data accumulated so far, and the same contents When the data of the same content is detected, the data portion of the same content is discarded, and the storage location of the same content data detected in the storage area of the discarded data is recorded and accumulated as reference data. Email storage system.   In a system for storing e-mails in a personal mail storage area registered in a mail server, when the mail server accepts an e-mail, the e-mail reception data is compared with the e-mail data accumulated so far. A reference data generation unit that generates, as reference data, a storage location in the personal mail storage area of the same content data portion when the same content data is detected by the comparison unit and the received data comparison unit; and the received data When the data of the same content is detected by the comparison unit, the data portion of the same content is discarded, and the reference data generated by the reference data generation unit is inserted and recorded in the storage region of the discarded data. An e-mail storage system comprising: a reception data storage unit that stores the received data in a predetermined area.   8. The e-mail storage system according to claim 6 or 7, wherein, when an e-mail is received, the e-mail data is divided into metadata, a body, and an attached file, if any, and the e-mail is sent after being decomposed into the attached files. An e-mail storage system, further comprising a decomposition unit.   9. The e-mail storage system according to claim 8, wherein when the received e-mail body includes a citation part, the e-mail decomposition part receives the e-mail data body from the e-mail decomposition unit and decomposes it for each citation level. An e-mail storage system, further comprising: a level analysis unit that sends the data for comparison with the text stored so far.   10. The electronic mail storage system according to claim 9, wherein the personal mail storage area has an area divided for each citation level in the storage area of the electronic mail text.   11. The e-mail storage system according to claim 6, wherein the received data comparison unit includes the same text that is completely matched and the similar text that matches a predetermined criterion for the same content to be compared. An e-mail storage system including any of the above.   12. The e-mail storage system according to claim 11, further comprising document summary creation software for determining similarity of mail text, and similar when the received data comparison unit determines similarity using the document summary creation software. An e-mail storage system characterized by including the mark in reference data.

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