JP2001092884A - Electronic transaction system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an electronic transaction system which does not impose any burden on a receiver of an order at the time of preparing a delivery slip. SOLUTION: The electronic transaction system prepares delivery instructing data by means of an orderer server 10 when an orderer orders a required resource to the receiver of the order and the delivery slip presented to the orderer at the time of delivering the ordered resource to the orderer by means of a receiver client 20 base on the delivery instructing data. The orderer server is provided with a data storing section 13 which stores the plurality of delivery instruction data to the plurality of receivers, a data processing section 12 which rearranges and extracts the delivery instructing data stored in the storing section in accordance with a command from the client, and a format converting section 16 which converts the extracted delivery instructing data into a file format suitable for preparation of the delivery slip at a site of the receiver of the order.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

In the present invention, the orderer issues an order slip to order necessary resources from a specific orderer, and the orderee receives an order together with a delivery slip created based on the order slip. The present invention relates to an electronic transaction system used for ordering / delivery operations such as delivery of resources to an order source. The resources referred to here include not only articles such as mechanical devices and electronic devices, but also services such as cleaning and maintenance.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art With the development of information networks,
Also in the delivery business, order information is sent from the ordering party to the ordering source in the form of fax, e-mail, or data transmission. In an advanced electronic trading system, it has been proposed to use the Internet or an extranet to digitize all information related to ordering / delivery work, and to further streamline the work by electronically performing settlement.

[0003]

However, it is difficult to digitize a delivery slip attached to a resource used for confirming the delivery of an ordered resource because of its nature. The format is still adopted. For this reason, it is necessary for the ordering party to create a delivery slip by hand on the basis of the order information, or to perform processing such as format conversion and layout conversion on the electronic order information to create a delivery slip and print out the delivery slip. . This work imposes a heavy burden, considering that most orderers require delivery slips with their own designated forms. In particular, when receiving orders that simultaneously receive orders where resource items to be ordered are of different types and delivery locations are variously distributed, mistakes are made or incorrect data is changed during work involving human hands. Such mistakes cause great confusion at the time of delivery.
In view of the above situation, an object of the present invention is to provide an electronic transaction system that does not burden an orderee when creating a delivery slip.

[0004]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, when ordering a resource required by an orderer from an order source in an order source server, delivery instruction data is created, and the order destination client prepares the order resource. An electronic transaction system according to the present invention in which a delivery slip submitted to the order source at the time of delivery is created based on the delivery instruction data, wherein the order source server includes a plurality of delivery instruction data for a plurality of order destinations. A data processing unit that sorts and extracts the delivery instruction data stored in the data storage unit in accordance with a command from the ordering client; and stores the extracted delivery instruction data in the order destination. Is provided with a format conversion unit for converting to a file format suitable for creating a delivery slip.

[0005] In this configuration, the delivery instruction data as order information can be rearranged and extracted by using the delivery location and resource items as keys, and the extracted delivery instruction data is suitable for creating a delivery slip at the order destination. It is downloaded to the ordering party after being converted to the specified file format. Therefore, the ordering party that has already received the delivery instruction data, which has been classified by resource item or delivery location, in a file format suitable for creating a delivery slip, does not require any human data processing, Necessary delivery slips can be created, and the burden at the time of delivery slip creation work is drastically reduced.

According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the ordering server has a WWW server function, and the ordering client accesses the delivery instruction data of the ordering server via a WWW browser. If so, it is possible to access the ordering server and download necessary delivery instruction data using a WWW browser that can be obtained substantially free of charge, and the system to be built at the ordering destination is inexpensive. Furthermore, if an interface program for accessing the delivery instruction data with the ordering server and printing out the downloaded data as a delivery slip is created with a JAVA (registered trademark of Sun Microsystems) applet, this interface program can be used for ordering. Since it resides on the original server and is loaded into the order destination client only when necessary, an inexpensive network computer can be used as the order destination client.

Further, in a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the ordering server assigns a code indicating that the delivery instruction data has been downloaded to the delivery instruction data downloaded by the order destination client, and the delivery instruction data downloaded again. In the delivery slip created based on the information, information indicating that the document has been re-downloaded is recorded. In this configuration, the downloaded delivery instruction data, that is, the received order, can be easily separated from the new delivery instruction data, that is, the new order, and data transmission errors and data loss at the order destination can be made. Even if re-downloading of delivery instruction data is permitted as a recovery process for an abnormal situation such as, etc., the delivery slip with the re-downloaded history can be seen at a glance, so check carefully at the time of delivery. Inconveniences such as heavy delivery can be prevented beforehand.

[0008] When the delivery slip is printed out at the ordering client, the format of the delivery slip desired by the order source is
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, in order to fully conform to the form, the extracted delivery instruction data is converted into a file format suitable for creating a delivery slip. The format conversion unit is configured to express the delivery instruction data in a page description language. Have been. A typical page description language is PostScript, which is proposed by Adobe. By using this, even if a document has a complicated layout such as a delivery document, the ordering client can complete it. Reproduced in shape,
Print output is possible. The data described in PostScript can be printed out as it is by using a PostScript printer.
If the file is converted to an rtable Document Format file, the delivery slip can be displayed on a monitor screen by using Acrobat (product name of Adobe), or the delivery slip can be output by a non-postscript printer. Other features and advantages according to the present invention will become apparent from the following description of embodiments with reference to the drawings.

[0009]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS FIG. 1 shows that an order is placed from a certain corporate organization 1 as an order source to a certain corporate organization 2 as an order destination for resources as goods and services. A schematic block diagram of an electronic transaction system focusing on the flow of a slip when resources are delivered to a business organization 2 is shown.

[0010] An order source server 10 is provided as a core system of the order work in the order source organization 1.
An order source client 20 is provided as a core system of the order receiving work in the order receiving organization. The ordering server 10 and the ordering client 20 can be connected via a communication line 5 such as a dedicated line or a public line.
As a protocol of this communication network, TCP / IP used in the Internet is adopted.
Devices and software that are widely used on the Internet can be used.

The actual ordering sources in the ordering organization 1 are mainly factories 1a... Arranged in various places, and include ordering / delivery systems 1b. Have been. The ordering / delivery system 1b and the ordering server 10 are also connected by the communication line 4, and TCP / IP is also adopted as a protocol of the communication network.

The order source server 10 is provided with a reception data buffer 11 for temporarily storing delivery instruction data of necessary resources sent from the ordering / delivery system 1b. The delivered delivery instruction data is sent to the ordering factory, delivery location,
It is managed and stored in the database 13 as a data storage unit as a record having fields such as an ordering party, a product name, a product number, and a purchase quantity. The delivery instruction data stored in the database 13 in a searchable / extractable manner is accessed by the ordering client 20 of the ordering organization 2 via the WWW server 15 as will be described in detail later.
The order data is searched and rearranged as requested by the client 20 at the order destination, and is converted into a transmission file in a desired format by the file creation unit 14.
Downloaded as an order file.

The format that the order receiving client 20 can receive includes a standard data format in which each field is separated by a delimiter such as a comma or a space, and records are separated into continuous files in which a record such as a line feed code is converted into a text file, and a page description. As an example of the language, there is a slip format described in the layout of a delivery slip attached to each record at the time of delivery using postscript, and a form format similarly described in the layout of the order book using postscript. In order to convert the delivery instruction data retrieved and extracted from the database 13 into a standard data format, a slip format, and a form format, a format conversion unit 16 is linked to the file creation unit 14 of the data processing unit 12.

The order destination client 20 is basically composed of a general-purpose personal computer system, and
In order to access the WWW server 15 via the communication line 5 and download the delivery instruction data in a desired format, the WWW browser 21 and the WWW browser 2
There is provided a helper application 22 for assisting a function not provided in the first embodiment. The network communication function is constructed by software such as a network card connected to a bus line of the computer or a network protocol incorporated in the OS of the computer. The operation interface for operating the database 13 and downloading the extracted data by the client 20 is programmed so as to be executed by the JAVA applet. Client 2
As soon as 0 connects to the WWW server 15, the corresponding J
The AVA applet is downloaded to the client 20, and an operation screen corresponding to a desired operation mode is created on the screen of the client 20.

For example, in an operation mode for extracting and extracting delivery instruction data stored in the database 13,
An operation screen 50 as shown in FIG. 2 is generated. The operation screen 50 is a screen of a general WWW browser 21 divided into a tool area 50a located at an upper end thereof and a display area 50b located below the tool area 50a. The database operation screen created by the applet has been created. On the right side, there is a search condition input area 51 for setting search conditions for the database 13. The search conditions include a factory setting unit 51a for selecting a desired factory from a plurality of ordering factories displayed as a drop-down list, and an order instruction. The data is input from the creation date setting unit 51b for setting the period of data creation date.
When the search button 51 is pressed after the search condition is set, the delivery instruction data searched and extracted from the database 13 is displayed in the middle result display column 53 by arranging the fields (items) of each record horizontally and a plurality of records. Are displayed in a vertical list. If the number of records is larger than the displayable number, a scroll bar will be displayed.
By operating the scroll bar, it is possible to see all records.

As a download button for the extracted data,
Data retrieval button 54, delivery slip retrieval button 5
5, there is a form retrieval button 55. When the data retrieval button 54 is pressed, the delivery instruction data retrieved and extracted from the database 13 and displayed in the result display column 53 is displayed in the standard data format described above in the order destination client 2.
0 download. Since the loaded data file is managed by commercially available spreadsheet software, the data conversion unit 23 converts only the desired fields so that they are displayed in a desired order, and further sets the new data file name to only one. For this purpose, the file name is stored in a storage medium such as the hard disk 26 with the download date included at least in part.

When the delivery slip retrieval button 54 is pressed, the screen is switched to an operation screen 60 as shown in FIG. Since this operation screen 60 is also made of the JAVA applet,
Input fields and buttons related to a delivery slip download operation are displayed in a display area 50b located below the tool area 50a located at the upper end thereof. The delivery instruction data, which is to be a delivery slip, is printed out one by one by the printer 25 in the order in which it was downloaded and becomes a delivery slip, so that the order in which the data is downloaded is important. For this reason, it is necessary to rearrange the extracted delivery instruction data on the operation screen 60 according to a request. For this reason, there is a sorting condition input area 61 for inputting a priority key for sorting, and when the rightmost button is clicked, possible sorting conditions are displayed as a drop-down list. The sorting conditions include a delivery place, an article type, a product number, and the like. By appropriately selecting the sorting conditions, it is only necessary to sort in order while being launched by the printer 25. When the download button 62 is pressed after inputting the sorting conditions that enable distribution to 6..., The delivery instruction data retrieved and extracted from the database 13 is transmitted to the format conversion unit 16 by the delivery slip issuing unit. Each time, it is taken into the postscript language so as to have the layout according to the delivery slip shown in FIG. 4, and is finally generated as a postscript file. At this time, since characters, lines, and drawings other than the data constituting the delivery slip are stored in the format conversion unit 16 in the form of a plurality of types of templates in advance, an appropriate template is selected according to the ordering goods and the order source. You. Further, since the format conversion unit 16 is also provided with a barcode generation function, data selected in advance from the delivery instruction data is converted into a barcode, and is similarly taken into the PostScript language. When the conversion of the order instruction data into a postscript file is completed, the postscript file is downloaded to the order destination client 20. In this embodiment, in order to directly search the database 13 on the delivery slip operation screen 60 without going through the operation screen 50 for extracting and displaying the order instruction data, a search condition input area for setting the search conditions 63 and a search button 64 are also provided,
Access the database 13 directly from this operation screen,
Desired order instruction data can be extracted and downloaded in a slip format.

The delivery slip PostScript file downloaded to the order receiving client 20 in this manner is converted to a PDF for printing out by a non-Postscript printer and displaying it on a display.
The processing unit 24 outputs a PDF (Portable Doc)
document format :) file. This PDF file can be displayed on a display or printed out with fidelity to the layout set by using a PDF viewer application program such as Acrobat (product name of Adobe in the United States). By registering the PDF viewer as a helper application 22 of the WWW browser 21 or as a plug-in software of the WWW browser 21, the downloaded delivery slip postscript file is immediately output by the printer 25, as shown in FIG. It is possible to create a simple delivery slip. The delivery slip created is the relevant shipping area 6.
・ Attached to the box to be delivered and sent to
Is sent to the delivery site 3 and received.

When the form retrieval button 55 is pressed, the delivery instruction data retrieved and extracted from the database 13 and displayed in the form of a list in the result display column 53 is substantially converted into a result display column by the format converter 16 using a postscript. 5
3 and is downloaded to the ordering client 20. Since this downloaded file is also a postscript file as described above, it is converted into a PDF file and then processed using a PDF viewer.

As described above, in this electronic transaction system, the order receiving client 20 accesses the order source server 10 to download desired order instruction data as a file having a format suitable for easily creating a delivery slip. can do. In order to avoid such easiness of taking out the order instruction data from being doubled out, that is, generating duplicate orders or duplicate deliveries, the data processing unit 12 assigns a downloaded check column as an attribute value of the delivery instruction data. The delivery instruction data once downloaded to the order destination client 20 is given a flag indicating that the download has been completed. It is managed so that the downloaded delivery instruction data is not extracted from the normal search, so if it is necessary to download again due to loss of the download file, it is necessary to search and extract from the special processing operation screen and download it again is there. At this time, the format conversion unit 16 lays out a symbol indicating re-downloading, here "R", so as to be described in the reload check column (see FIG. 4) on the lower side of the delivery slip. Therefore, "R" is recorded in the delivery slip created using the re-downloaded file.
Careful confirmation is performed between the ordering party and the ordering source so that duplicate orders and duplicate deliveries do not occur.

In the above embodiment, the format of the downloaded PostScript file is converted into a PDF file on the order receiving client side for display display and printer output of the PostScript file. A configuration in which the server converts the format to a PDF file and then downloads the file may be employed. Also, in order to maintain the accurate layout of the delivery slip, Postscript is used as the page description language here, but other file formats that can maintain the accurate layout of the delivery slip, such as TeX, should be adopted. Can be.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of an electronic transaction system according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an operation screen for extracting and extracting delivery instruction data.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing an operation screen for taking out a delivery slip file;

FIG. 4 is an explanatory view showing a delivery slip.

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 1 ordering organization 1b ordering / delivery system 2 ordering organization 3 delivery place 4 communication line 5 communication line 6 shipping place 10 ordering server 11 reception data buffer 12 data processing unit 13 database (data storage unit) 14 file creation unit 15 WWW Server 16 Format conversion unit 20 Ordering client 21 WWW browser 22 Helper application 23 Data conversion unit 24 PDF processing unit

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (72) Inventor Kimio Nakamura 64 Ishizukitamachi Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture Inside Kubota Sakai Works (72) Inventor Takashi Nakaura 64 Ishizukitamachi Sakai City Osaka Prefecture Kubota Sakai Co., Ltd. Inside the factory (72) Inventor Akira Namura 64 Ishizukitamachi, Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture Inside Kubota Sakai Factory (72) Inventor Masashi Tamaki 64, Ishizukitamachi Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture Inside Kubota Sakai Factory (72) Inventor Wei Hihara 3- 1-4, Motomachi, Naniwa-ku, Osaka, Osaka Nanba AK Building Kubota System Development Co., Ltd. In-house (72) Inventor Yasuyasu Oshima 3- 1-4, Motomachi, Namiwa-ku, Osaka, Osaka Nan BAK Building Kubota System Development Co., Ltd. In-house F-term (reference) 5B049 BB07 CC05 DD01 EE05 FF07 GG02

Claims (4)

[Claims] An order source server creates delivery instruction data when ordering resources required by an order source to an order destination, and a delivery submitted to the order source when the order destination client delivers the order resource. An electronic transaction system in which a voucher is created based on the delivery instruction data, wherein the order source server stores a plurality of delivery instruction data for a plurality of order destinations, and a data storage unit that stores the plurality of delivery instruction data. A data processing unit for rearranging and extracting the extracted delivery instruction data in accordance with the order from the client of the order destination, and a format conversion for converting the extracted delivery instruction data to a file format suitable for creating a delivery slip at the order destination Electronic trading system characterized by comprising a section. 2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the order source server has a WWW server function, and the order destination client accesses the delivery instruction data of the order source server via a WWW browser. Electronic trading system as described. 3. The delivery server, wherein a code indicating that the delivery instruction data has been downloaded is assigned to the delivery instruction data downloaded by the order destination client, and a delivery slip created based on the delivery instruction data downloaded again. The electronic transaction system according to claim 1, wherein information indicating that the electronic transaction has been re-downloaded is recorded in the electronic transaction system. 4. The electronic transaction system according to claim 1, wherein said format conversion unit expresses said delivery instruction data in a page description language.