WO1997025679A1

WO1997025679A1 - Method and apparatus for managing electronic file

Info

Publication number: WO1997025679A1
Application number: PCT/JP1996/000033
Authority: WO
Inventors: Ritsuo Fukaya; Makoto Ariga
Original assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
Priority date: 1996-01-12
Filing date: 1996-01-12
Publication date: 1997-07-17

Abstract

In a system for managing electronic documents, the attributes of relations between the documents are defined on the basis of the correlation between the contents of the documents, and an electronic file in which the attributes are described is managed together with the documents, guaranteeing the content matching between the documents. When a document is prepared, an attribute management file generating/editing function section (115) generates an attribute management file in which the relation of citation of the contents of the document is described, and the file is stored in a database management system (103). When a document is revised, an attribute management file retrieving function section (116) retrieves the corresponding attribute management file, and a master-servant relation attribute detecting portion (117) and a document revision monitoring/displaying function section (118) analyzes the relations so that the progress of the document content revision, that is defined in advance, is monitored and the matching of the contents between the documents is guaranteed. Accordingly, guarantee of matching of the contents entailed by the revision of a document can be easily provided in a document system containing formatted documents and nonformatted documents, such as documents relating to the design, production, inspection, sale, etc, of industrial products, and standard documents stating them, where matching of the contents is of particular importance. The method is extremely effective to receive the certification of the production standards requiring strict management of documents, such as ISO9000 established recently, and to apply the production standards.

Description

Specification

Electronic file management method and apparatus

The present invention relates to a document management system for storing and managing digitized document files, such as a database. Background art

A document management system provided with means for holding a computerized document file on a storage medium, searching, and viewing the document file is widely used. Further, in these systems, techniques for ensuring the content consistency at the time of document revision, which are related to the present invention, include, for example, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. In some cases, information about the creator is added to the body of the document information, and this is used to authenticate the operation qualification of the document.

Generally, a document group under the control of a document management system has an issuer for each document. When issuing the document, the document issuer

(A) Issuer's own information · Created without relying on information in other documents based on judgment

(I) Ability to cite information contained in other documents, or to create by modifying it

Take one of the following methods. (A) is called "generation" of information, and (i) is called "quotation" of information. Those who generate information are responsible for generating the information. By the way, in the document group, there is a relevance of the content of the document caused by “quotation”. At this time, when revising such mutually related documents, if the revision of a certain document does not accompany the revision of the revised portion of the document with the revision of the related document, the document group is revised. Within the integrity It is obvious that it cannot be secured. And if citations are chained or divergent between three or more documents, these revisions

(a) Based on the consent of the creator of the information to be revised

(b) The time order of revision shall not be reversed to the order of citation-cited relations: two conditions that the cited document will not be revised before the cited harm is revised. is necessary. For this purpose, rather than simply information such as “author”, “whether there is a revision” or “whether or not it is the original document”, the citation-to-citation relationship between It is necessary to add information on the time series of the revision processing.

The present invention provides a document management system with a means for achieving the above conditions and ensuring the consistency of document contents in document revision. Disclosure of the invention

In order to solve the above-mentioned problem, the present invention employs the following means. (1) Based on the citation relationship described in the preceding paragraph, the “primary” attribute is assigned to the quoted portion of the harmed quote (this is referred to as “citing source”). In addition, the part of the document created by the citation (referred to as “cited”) is complementarily given the “dependency” attribute. Specifically, in an electronic file management method in a network including a terminal that creates an electronic file, and a database that stores and manages the created electronic file, the electronic file may be associated with a pair or a set related to the electronic file. On the other hand, based on the relevance of the contents included in each, by defining the attribute of “main” in one or some of the pairs and the attribute of “subordinate” in the other or the rest, When revising the content, ensure that the content is consistent with other electronic files that are relevant to the content.

Here, is the citation relationship between documents generally a congestion relationship in which a part of a certain document becomes the source of citation and another part of the same document becomes the destination of citation? Therefore, the master-slave attributes must be defined independently for multiple areas in one document. On the other hand, the document file in the document management system which is the object of the present invention is generally a file having a unique format created by a plurality of document creation software. It is not preferable to add a part to add an attribute, because it will disturb the intrinsic format. For this reason, in the present invention, information for designating a portion on a document to which a master-slave attribute has been added is held by the method described in the next section.

(2) A coordinate system is virtually defined within the display surface of the target document. For example, an orthogonal coordinate system in which the origin is at the upper left of the document and the downward and right directions are positive is appropriate. Using this coordinate system, the "area" can be determined and displayed in the document. For example, in the case of a rectangular area, the coordinates of the upper left and lower right vertices of the rectangle are uniquely determined. It is also possible to create an indefinite area by connecting several rectangular areas and treating them as one area. This area is defined on the display surface of the document irrespective of the nature of the harm, and therefore, regardless of the nature of the target document, that is, a text document, a table, or a drawing, etc. Can also indicate the position in the document. Specifically, an electronic file is created that includes the coordinates of an area in the electronic file, the location of another area associated with the area by the master-slave attribute, and the master-slave attribute of the area. Thus, the attributes of the master and the slave are independently managed in a plurality of areas in one electronic file.

In addition, in order to define such a coordinate system, the present invention includes a functional part having a function of analyzing and displaying each file format document file in the system. If the master-slave attribute is defined for an area defined in this way, the "coordinates" of the area, master or slave attribute information, and location information in the system of a document including an area corresponding to the area in a master-slave relationship In addition, the master and slave attributes can be completely described using the area coordinates in the document. So these By creating an electronic file (which will be referred to as an attribute management file) containing attributes at the time of attribute assignment and by associating it with a document file to which attributes have been assigned in the database, Attribute description.

(3) When revising a document, follow the procedure below.

(a) The document management system detects whether the part to be revised of the harmful subject to revision has the master-slave attribute. This work can be judged by the presence or absence of the file described in the above (2), which has a link on the database for the damage caused by the revised work.

(b) If the attribute of the main is assigned to the part, other harmfulness which cites the part, that is, harmfulness including a part having a subordinate attribute to the part (referred to as a dependent document) Therefore, the location of the subordinate harm is searched from the contents of the file described in the above (2), and the issuer of the subordinate harm is notified of the occurrence of revision by using the mail function on the system. You can be notified. In this case, the part will have the highest priority for revision. If necessary, it is possible to request an opinion on the possibility of revision or request confirmation of the end of the revision of the dependent document.

(c) If an attribute according to the part is assigned, there is another document citing the part, that is, a document including a part having the main attribute to the part (referred to as a main document). Therefore, the location of the main harm is searched from the file content described in the above (2), and a notice is issued to the issuer of the main harm, requesting permission to revise the cited source. In this case, the part has a lower priority than the main harm to the revision, and the document cannot be revised without the permission of the main document issuer, that is, the creator of the information to be revised. In response to this, the main document issuer determines whether or not the citation source can be revised, and notifies this to the dependent document issuer. The dependent document issuer will revise its own document with the permission of the main document issuer and, if necessary, notify the master document issuer of the end of the revision. Basically follow these steps to ensure consistency of document content when revising It becomes possible. Specifically, when revising and editing the electronic file to be managed, the relevance of the contents in a plurality of electronic files is detected using the predefined attributes of the master and slave, and the relevance is determined by the attributes of the master and slave. The priority of the change of the contents of the plurality of detected electronic files is defined by the attribute of the master and the slave.

By assigning the master-slave attribute described in (1) in the previous section, the document management system can detect the existence of a citation relationship between the contents of multiple documents. Preceding paragraph

By describing the master-slave attribute in the method described in (2), the master-slave attribute can be assigned independently to a plurality of parts in one document. In addition, it is possible to search for parts of another document that correspond to parts of a document in a master-slave relationship. By adopting the procedure described in the previous section (3), consistency of the document contents at the time of document revision can be ensured by using the attributes of the master and slave. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 shows a functional configuration diagram of a document consistency management system according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 shows an example of the configuration information of the attribute management file of the present invention. FIG. 3 shows an example of a method of defining a region in a document of the present invention and a method of displaying the region simultaneously with the document. FIG. 4 shows an example of the concept of a procedure method for detecting revision priorities from master-slave attributes of the present invention. FIG. 5 shows an example of the citation work of the present invention. FIG. 6 shows an example of the revision work of the present invention. FIG. 7 shows an example of the consistency management procedure of the present invention. BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

A document consistency management system according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

Fig. 1 shows the functional configuration of the system.

The document integrity management system 101, together with the document creation software 105, It is mounted on the computer 102. The computer 102 is connected via a communication line 121 to a database management system 103 having a computer 104 for managing a document database. The computer 104 functions as a so-called database server, registers and stores the document file created by the harm creation software 105, searches for it based on a request from the computer 102, etc., and makes a request. It has a general sentence database management function, such as transferring it first.

The document consistency management system 101 has the following functions. The screen operation function unit 110 interprets operations and work orders performed by the system user on the screen. Based on these instructions, the document file search function unit 114 gives the database operation unit 112 information about documents to be searched from the database or documents to be stored in the database. The database operation unit 112 converts the information into a unique command that can be interpreted by the database, and operates the database in the database management system 103 through the communication control unit 113. In the case of search, the document file transferred from the database is passed to the document display function unit 111 and displayed on the screen. The attribute management file creation and editing function unit 115 creates and edits the attribute management file containing the information on the master-slave relationship attributes described in the previous section, and the document display function unit 111 The information in the attribute management file is displayed at the same time as the corresponding document file. The created and edited attribute management file is also stored in the database in the database management system 103 via the database operation unit 112 and the communication control unit 113. At the time of harm damage revision, the harmful file search function unit 114 searches and forwards the harmful object to be revised from the database, and the sex management file search function unit 116 also has the database operation unit 111 Then, an attribute management file corresponding to the target document is retrieved from the database via the communication control unit 113 and passed to the master / slave relationship attribute detection unit 117. The master-slave relationship attribute detection unit 1 17 provides necessary information from the attribute management file. The report is extracted and passed to the document revision status monitor 'display function unit 1 18'. Document revision status monitoring · Display function section 1 18 defines procedures to ensure content consistency to be taken at the time of revision (specific examples will be described later), and appends the revised part of the document to be revised Select an appropriate procedure from the master-slave relationship attributes, record the information that records the progress of the procedure in the attribute management file, and display it on the screen. The e-mail necessary for the procedure is performed by the mailing function unit 119.

The document assigned to the revised part of the document to be revised is not necessarily the one in the database management system 103 due to the master-slave relationship. The database management system 109 on another line 125 connected via a communication trunk line 123 or may also be one in the database.

Next, the information format of the attribute management file will be described with reference to FIG. In general, the harmful data base 210 managed by the database management systems 103 and 109 has a table with the harmful search key 202 as the primary key, and the target is located under the primary key. The document address 203 of the document is recorded. The primary key generally contains the document number, the name of the document creator, the date and time the document was created, and information about some of the criteria that describe the nature of the document. The database management software knows the storage location of the document file 204 from the document address 203 and stores and retrieves the file. Here, the location is specified by the document address 203. The document file 204 does not necessarily have to be on the same storage medium as the document database 201, but on a storage medium at another location connected by a communication line as described in the explanation of Fig. 1. In the present invention, since the information for consistency management is described in the attribute management file 206 created in association with each document file, the same information as that of the document file is used. Under the search key, the corresponding attribute management file address 205 is described, which is the same mechanism as storing and retrieving document files. The sex management file 206 is also stored or acquired.

The internal description of the attribute management file 206 will be described. In the attribute management file, character strings representing the information described below are described in a state where they are separated by appropriate delimiters.

(1) Document format information 2007: Create the corresponding document file 204. Describe the format information. Includes information such as the document creator, the type of document creation software, document size, and paper orientation.

(2) In-document area number 208: In the present invention, the area 216 is defined at an arbitrary position on the display image 215 of the document and is used as a unit for managing consistency. It has information for identifying these areas. This is the area number in the document. The area number 208 is different for each area because of one sentence harm.

(3) Sentence 內 area coordinates 209: Define and describe the coordinates that define the range of each area using the method described later.

(4) Relevant area number 210: The upper area of the harmful area identified by the area number 208 in the harmful area is related by the “master-slave” relationship malleability based on the relationship between the contents in the territory. Number assigned to an area on another document that was allocated. Since the identifier is the same as the area number 208, when a plurality of related areas exist for one harmful area number, a different related area number is assigned to each.

(5) Attribute information 211: The area identified by area number 208 in Bunka and the related area The “main / slave j relation attribute assigned to the related area identified by area number 210” is described. I do.

(6) Related harmful address 212: Address of storage location of harmful file including related area identified by related area number 210. When the file is not on the same storage medium as the attribute management file 206, it contains information for designating the storage medium, for example, an address on a network. The attribute management file search function of the document integrity management system (114 in Fig. 1) Based on the address, you can search for related areas that are related to a certain area.

(7) Related document 內 area number 2 1 3: In the related document whose position is specified by the related harmful address 2 1 2, the relation associated with the area identified by document 內 area number 208 Area number assigned to the area. This is equivalent to the in-document area number 208 in the attribute management file corresponding to the document identified by the related document address 211.

(8) Revision history 2 14: Based on the relevance of both contents between the area identified by area number 208 in the document and the area identified by area number 2 13 in the related document Record information of the revision work that occurred. Includes the progress stages of the predefined revision work and the date and time they arrived. Based on this information, the display function unit (118 in Fig. 1) of the document integrity management system's monitoring of the status of harmful damage revision monitors the harmfulness revision work and revises various instructions for ensuring document integrity. Give to. —Since one document area can have a relationship attribute with a plurality of related areas, the information on the related area corresponding to the document area number 208 is 2 10 b to 2

There can be multiple such as 1 3b. Also, a plurality of areas may be defined on a single sentence 2 15, and these may be independently associated with each related area. When one area 2 16 in 5 is identified by the area number 208 in the document, the other area 2 17 is identified by another area number 208 b, and similarly to the area number 208 Information 2 above

0 9 to 2 14 are held. By having such a structure, information for defining multiple areas independently in one document and searching for related areas independently associated with each other by the “master / slave” relationship attribute for each of these areas Can be held.

Next, a method for defining an area in a document will be described with reference to FIG. The document format information 301 included in the attribute management file 206 (document format information 207 in FIG. 2) includes document size information 302, paper orientation information 303, and creation application It contains the session name information 304.

When the document file 305 is passed to the document integrity management system 101 and displayed, the corresponding attribute management file 206 is also passed. The sentence damage display function section 360 (111 in Fig. 1) of the system refers to the created application name information 304 and selects and starts the individual document module 310 provided with the procedure for analyzing the relevant document file. To create, draw and display screen image data. On the other hand, a coordinate axis range for covering the entire document is calculated from the document size information 302 and the paper direction information 303. For example, if a coordinate unit equivalent to 1/10 mm on the actual harmful object is set, it is known as A4 size portrait paper, and it is 0 to 297 0 in the vertical direction and 210 000 in the horizontal direction. It will be set to about. Further, information about the display range of the harmful image on the screen included in the harmful file 305 and information 311 on the display magnification, etc., are received from the individual harmfulness module 310, and the coordinate axis unit is used. The number of display pixels per pixel 308 is calculated.

In the screen display, the area 3 17 on the sentence image is represented by a coordinate system in which the origin is at the upper left of the document, the X axis is 3 14 in the horizontal direction, and the y axis is 3 15 in the vertical direction. It can be expressed as a set of 18 and 3 19. The coordinates 3 18 and 3 19 can be converted into pixels on the display screen by the above-described number of display pixels per coordinate axis unit 30 8, so that, for example, color information is appropriately changed and colored for the pixels corresponding to the corresponding area It is possible to take an identification means such as. In this way, the revised document and the area in the document can be simultaneously identified and displayed on the screen. To specify a non-rectangular area, for example, a plurality of areas may be connected as shown in areas 320 a to c. In this case, the coordinates of each area are simultaneously stored in the area coordinates 209 in the document shown in FIG.

An example of document consistency management using these mechanisms will be described with reference to FIG. Consider the case where a certain harmful 401 is to be revised in the area 404 on the document. Here, when creating the document 401, the author 409 must use a different storage medium. It is assumed that the user refers to the area 405 of the document 402 stored in the on-body database 408, and cites the content in the area 404. In this case, the author 409 defines the areas 404 and 405 on the document according to the instructions of the document consistency management system, and assigns the “master-slave” relationship attribute between them. In this case, region 405 is "main" with respect to region 404, and region 404 is "sub" with region 405. The system describes the information about the area and the attribute in the attribute management file 206 described in FIG. As described above, information on the area 405 is described in the attribute management file 206 accompanying the harmful information 402. Now, when revising area 404, the system asks author 409 for the relevant area that has the “primary” attribute for the revision.

Search for 5 and indicate its existence. Needless to say, the author 409 is responsible for the content of the related domain 405 because the domain 405 with the “primary” attribute has priority over the revision. Then, an e-mail requesting permission to revise the area 404 is sent to the manager 410 of the data. The data controller 410 searches for the related area that cited the area 404, and its creator (in the example in the figure, the document 404 that has the area 406 indirectly cited from the area 405) An e-mail is sent to the creator, 4 1 1), who gives notice of the revision of area 4 04. (Alternatively, a comment on the revision of area 404 may be provided.) If the data controller 410 approves the revision, it revises the area 405 and sends it to the authors 409 and 411 by e-mail. Notify. The authors 409 and 411 revise their own documents and notify the data controller 410 of this. The data controller 410 confirms that the creator of all relevant areas has revised the relevant area. As a result, the consistency of the revised contents of the three areas 404, 405, and 406 is performed under the supervision of the data controller 410, and the consistency of the document contents is assured by the data controller 410. Is done. In addition, the system keeps track of each stage of the revision work, from 4 12 to 4 15, and displays this to the data manager 4 10, and also to the document creator who may lose consistency. On the other hand, a warning can be issued.

Next, an example of citation and revision work of a document using the above mechanism will be described with reference to FIG. As an example, consider the case of creating a departmental standard document (lower-level document) that uses in-house standards as the upper level document. The creator must use the computer display screen 501 on the appropriate document creation software such as a commercially available word processor (however, an individual document module 310 corresponding to the unique format of the document file of the software is required). Yes) 502 is started, and the department section standard harm 504 is created. If it is necessary to cite in-house standard 505, which is a higher sentence, at the time of preparation, the in-house standard 505 is sent to the document display function section 503 (1 1 1 in Fig. 1) of the document integrity management system. Use search 'to show. At this time, the system also searches the attribute management file 206 associated with the in-house standard 505, calls it up at the same time, and if there is an existing in-document area described in the attribute management file, it searches this file. Display in the same way as described in Figure 3. The creator refers to the in-house standard 505 and appropriately cites the contents in the section 內 Criteria 504. After recording the harmful relationship to record this citation relationship, the creator must use the document integrity management system's harmfulness indication function 506 (newly activates the same function as 503). (Screen 501b). At this time, the system's attribute management file creation / editing function section (115 in Fig. 1) creates an attribute management file corresponding to the departmental standard harm 504. Next, the creator defines and creates an area 508 as a citation source and an area 507 as a citation destination on the screen by, for example, a rectangular drawing by mouse operation. (If the area 508 is an existing area in the document, it is described in the attribute management file and does not need to be newly created.) In addition, the area 508 which is the quotation source between these two areas An operation of assigning a relation attribute with 8 as “Principal” and the quotation area 507 as “Subordinate” is performed. When the above series of operations is completed, the system performs the following processing.

1) Create coordinate data for areas 507 and 508 according to the method described in Fig. 3. To achieve.

2) In the attribute management file of areas 507 and 508, add the above description of the coordinate data and the "master-slave" relation attributes in the format described in Fig. 2.

3) Store the file in each database.

With such an operation, the system can record the citation relationship as a “master-slave” relationship attribute between the domains.

Next, an example of a work of revising a document to which a “master / slave” relation attribute has been given through the above-described operation will be described with reference to FIGS. 6 and 7. FIG. The reviser displays the document to be revised 604 using the document display function section 602 of the document consistency management system. At this time, the management system analyzes the attribute management file of the document to be revised and displays the area 606 set in the harm on the document. If the area to be revised is included in the area, the reviser specifies the area, and the system searches the relevant area information contained in the attribute management file for the document containing the relevant area of the area and its attribute management file. The document 605 and the related area 607 are displayed in another window 603. When the reviser instructs the system to continue the revision work, the system performs the following actions.

1) Display the revision history of the related area for the area in window 608. The revision history information is described in the attribute management file for each related area as described in FIG. The revision history information records when the revision has reached any of the stages 4 12 to 4 15 in FIG. (It goes without saying that steps 4 12 to 4 15 are only examples, and other steps may be set as necessary.)

2) Activate the e-mail function 609 and prepare to send e-mail to the creator of the document including the relevant area. In the e-mail, the reviser describes the summary of the revision. The sent e-mail has a special header part that specifies the ID of the relevant area and the mail type in the following categories.

a) Request for revision permission b) Notice of revision (consultation)

C) Answer or opinion

d) Notification of completion of revision

The mail function acquires the revision history and related attribute information of the relevant area, refers to the primary key (202 in Fig. 2) of the document containing the area having the related attribute in the database, and creates the document creator. Information can be obtained. Also, determine which of the above a) to d) should be sent from the revision history, and add a header part to the created mail as appropriate.

3) If there is an area with the “main” attribute (Fig. 7, 700a), the e-mail described in (a) above is sent to the creator, and the revision history of the own document is sent.

Record in 70 1. Revision history 701 is considered to be in the "Revision awaiting status" 703. On the other hand, on the “main” attribute side, the e-mail 709 is automatically detected and recorded in the revision history 702 of the own document. Revision history 702 is considered to be in the "Review Status" 705. Next, on the “primary” attribute side, the creator sends the above-mentioned (b) e-mail 710 to ask other “subordinate” attribute document creators using the system's related area search function, This is recorded in the revision history 72. Revision history 7 02 enters “waiting for consultation response” 7 06. The point at which all of the above response mails (c) 711 are returned is recorded in the revision history 702, and the user enters the “revision waiting state” 707. At this point, a determination is made as to whether the revision is appropriate, and if so, revision 714 is implemented. At the same time, the above-mentioned (d) notification of completion of revision 7 1 2 is sent to all “dependency” attribute document creators and recorded in the revision history 7 02. The revision history 702 is in the “waiting for revision notification” 708. The “subordinate” attribute document automatically detects the incoming call of 7 12 and records it in the revision history 7 01. Revision history 7 0 1 enters “Revision approved status” 7 0 4. Here, for the first time, the revision completion notice 7 15 is made in accordance with the content of the revision completion notice, and at the same time, the revision completion notice 7 13 is sent. Revision history 7001 is "Revision completed". Revision history 702 completes the whole process of revision, waiting for completion notification from all “subordinate” attribute documents. Where the system is

A) Temporal order relationship between Revision 7 14 and Revision 7 15

ヽ) Time length of state 703, 704, 706, 708

By monitoring such changes, it is possible to prevent revisions that would impair document consistency. For example, if a constraint is set on the system that the revision of the “subordinate” attribute document must be performed at the time of the revision history of the attribute document, the revision history must be changed. 15 can be prevented from being done prior to revision 7 14 of the “main” document.

4) If the requester of revision has the “primary” attribute (Fig. 70000b), the revisioner will have the most superior position in information management. First, (b) mail 722 is sent to the “subordinate” attribute document. Revision history 7 16 has entered “Revision Grace Status” 7 18. The “subordinate” attribute side detects the mail 7222 and records it in the history 7117, and enters the “revision notification waiting state” 720. Next, the revision 725 is executed on the “main” attribute side, and a revision completion notification 723 is sent. The revision history 7 16 is in the “Waiting for publication of revisions” 7 19. From then on, the process goes on in the same way as in Fig. 7 Revision 7100a and onwards, and the revision ends. As described above, according to the present invention, by assigning the “main / slave” relationship attribute, the superiority of the information modification right in the revision work is detected, and this is used effectively to match the content of the managed document. Therefore, even if there is a slight difference in each step of the revision work as described in FIGS. 6 and 7 of the above embodiment, as long as the above-mentioned purpose of the present invention is not impaired. No problem. Industrial applicability

Document system consisting of fixed-format and irregular-format documents, for example, documents related to the design, manufacture, inspection and sales of industrial products, and standard documents that define them Is particularly problematic in the consistency of their contents. If the present invention is applied in the operation of such a document system, it is easy to ensure content consistency accompanying the document revision. It goes without saying that it also has an advantageous effect on the acquisition and operation of manufacturing standards that require strict management of documents such as the recently established ISO 9001.

Claims

The scope of the claims

1. An electronic file management method in a network including a terminal that creates an electronic file and a database that stores and manages the created electronic file, comprising: On the other hand, based on the relevance of the contents included in each, by defining the attribute of “main” in one or some of the pairs and the attribute of “subordinate” in the other or the rest, An electronic file management method that, when revising the included content, ensures that the content is consistent with other electronic files that are relevant to the content.

2. The electronic file management method according to claim 1, wherein the attributes of the master and the slave are independently defined in a plurality of areas in one electronic file.

3. By creating an electronic file including the coordinates in the electronic file of the area, the location of the other area associated with the area by the master-slave attribute, and the master-slave attribute of the area. 3. The electronic file management method according to claim 2, wherein the attributes of the master and the slave are independently managed in a plurality of areas in the electronic file.

4. The electronic file management method according to claim 1, wherein an area in which the attributes of the master and the slave are defined is displayed simultaneously with the display of the electronic file.

5. The electronic file or the area in the electronic file in which the master-slave attribute is defined corresponding to the specified electronic file or the area in the electronic file is searched. Electronic file management method.

6. When revising and editing the electronic file to be managed, relevance of the contents in a plurality of electronic files is detected using the above-defined master-slave attribute, and multiple electronic files whose relevance is detected based on the master-slave attribute described above. For files, 8. The electronic file management method according to claim 1, wherein the priority of the change of the content is defined by the attribute of the master and the slave. 7.

7. It is composed of a terminal that creates an electronic file, and a database that stores and manages the created electronic file, and the terminal is provided for each pair or group of the electronic files. Based on the relevance of the content included, by providing means to define the attribute of “primary” in one or some of the pairs and the attribute of “subordinate” in the other or the rest, the content included in the electronic file An electronic file management system characterized by ensuring that the content is consistent with other electronic files that are relevant to the content when it is revised.

8. The electronic file management system according to claim 7, further comprising means for independently defining the attributes of the master and the slave in a plurality of areas in one electronic file.

9. A means for creating an electronic file including coordinates in the electronic file of the area, the location of another area associated with the area by the master-slave attribute, and the master-slave attribute of the area. 9. The electronic file management system according to claim 8, wherein the attributes of the master and the slave are independently managed in a plurality of areas in one electronic file.

10. The electronic file management system according to any one of claims 7 to 9, further comprising means for simultaneously displaying an area in which the attributes of the master and the slave are defined and displaying the electronic file.

11. The claims 7 to 10 having means for searching for an electronic file or an electronic file area in which the master-slave attribute is defined corresponding to a specified electronic file or an area in the electronic file. Electronic file management system according to any of the above.

1 2. When revising and editing an electronic file to be managed, use the previously defined master and slave attributes to detect the relevance of the contents in multiple electronic files. Claims 7 to 11 characterized by comprising: means and means for specifying the priority of content change for a plurality of electronic files whose relevance is detected by the master-slave attribute by the master-slave attribute. Electronic file management system according to any of the above.