JP2001125910A - Information source observation device, information source observation method and computer readable recording medium recording information source observation program - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To sum up URL pages referred to by a user as reference sources in a hypertext system such as a WWW and to present a list of reference sources to the user. SOLUTION: A reference information extraction means 4 extracts the URL of a reference source from a request header issued from a client computer 3, extracts the data type of a data file from a response header issued from a server computer 1 and stores these reference information in a reference information storage means 5. When the number of pieces of reference information exceeds a fixed number, the URLs of respective reference sources are summed up for each data type by using a counting means 6 and a sorting means 7. A frame URL excluding means 23 excludes the URL of a frame definition page so as not to count up it. Then the summed result is presented to the user as an information source list.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a system in which a server computer and a client computer are connected via a network, for example, when a data file having a hyperlink structure on the server computer is browsed on the client computer. The present invention relates to an information source observing apparatus and an information source observing method, and a computer-readable recording medium recording an information source observing program.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Recently, a plurality of server computers and a plurality of client computers are connected via a network, and multimedia data having a hypertext structure is stored in each server computer. Systems capable of browsing various multimedia data have become widespread. Examples of such a system include, for example, WW on the Internet.
There is a system called W (world wide web).

[0003] A document including multimedia data is described in a description language called, for example, HTML (hyper text markup language), and includes applications such as text documents, still images, moving images, music data, and Java (registered trademark) applets. It is possible to include programs and the like. Such a document (hereinafter, HTML)
A unique address called a URL (uniform resource locator) is assigned to each of the page and the multimedia data. The user can access a desired HTML page or multimedia data by specifying a URL on the browser. In addition, a link for accessing another page or multimedia data is embedded in the HTML page, and the user points to this link on the browser to display the linked page or multimedia data. It is also possible to move.

As a browser which is HTML document display software on a client computer, for example, Netscape C
ommunicator (registered trademark) or Microsoft Internet
Products such as Explorer (registered trademark) are widely used.

[0005] In these browsers, the accessed HT
The URL, access date and time, title, and the like of the ML page and the multimedia data can be stored on the hard disk in the client computer as history data. When the user wants to access the previously accessed HTML page or multimedia data again, the user can easily access the desired HTML page or multimedia data by referring to the history data.

[0006] For example, in Netscape Communicator, based on history data, an HTM accessed in the past is used.
It is possible to display the URLs of the L page and the multimedia data in the order of frequency or date and time.

Further, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No.
No. 0-143519 (publication date: 1998 (199)
8) May 29) "discloses a method and apparatus for ordering URLs accessed by a user in the past based on frequency and viewing time, and displaying the results.

[0008] For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No.
No. 204347 (publication date: 1997 (1997) 8)
5) "and a published patent publication" JP-A-10-21134 (publication date: January 23, 1998) "
In a gateway computer that relays a URL between a server computer and a client computer, if a relay cache is built in the gateway computer, the frequency of the URL relayed in the past is calculated and the list is calculated. And a method in which the gateway computer voluntarily updates the cache in order of frequency.

A common feature of these methods is that, regarding the URLs of HTML pages and multimedia data that have been accessed in the past, the frequency is noticed, the frequency is calculated by performing statistical processing on the URL, and the frequently used HT
The ML page and the multimedia data are determined to have a high user demand.

[0010]

Here, a system comprising a plurality of server computers for providing information, a gateway computer, and a client computer is assumed. The gateway computer is a computer for interconnecting different networks / systems.

[0011] For example, as shown in FIG. 10, the URL is "http://www.new" on a certain server computer.
An HTML page indicated by “s /” exists, and the URL is “http: //www.hello.nara/” on another server computer.
Assume that there is an HTML page indicated by.

An HTML page whose URL is indicated by “http://www.news/” contains certain news information (“Mainichi Shimbun”).
Is a page that provides the “Newsletter Information (“ http: //www.n
ews / 1.html ”)”, “Weather forecasts (“ http://www.news/2.
html ”)”, “Company A's new product (“ http://www.news/3.htm
l ”)”, “Company B's new product (“ http://www.news/4.htm
l ”)” and “Company C's new product (“ http://www.news/5.h
tml ")" are linked to the five HTML pages.

The URL is "http: //www.hello.nara"
The HTML page indicated by “/” is a page that provides Nara area information, and is described in “Stock Information (“ http: //www/a.mo.
v ”)” and “road information (“ http: //www/b.mov ”)”
Two video data, and "Notices (" http: // www
/index.html ”)” is linked to the HTML page.

[0014] Here, a certain user operates a client computer, and first, the URL is "http://www.news".
The user accesses the HTML page indicated by “/”, browses the five HTML pages (text data) linked from this page, and then changes the URL to “http: //www.h
ello.nara / ”to access the HTML page,
It is assumed that two moving image data and one HTML page (text data) linked from this page are browsed. At this time, an access log as shown in FIG. 11 is recorded on the gateway computer.

In FIG. 11, the URL is "http: /
The reason that the HTML page indicated by “/www.news/” is counted only once is as follows: For example, the HTML page indicated by “http://www.news/” is used. From the page, click on the link to the “newsbook information (“ ht
tp: //www.news/1.html ”)” page, and after browsing, press the back button (back button) of the browser to return to the “http://www.news/” page again Assume that the user has similarly moved to the other four link destinations. At this time, a certain amount of cache is usually stored in the browser, and "news information (" http://www.news/1.html ")"
When returning to the page of “http://www.news/” from the page of “http://www.news/”, the data of the page of “http://www.news/” is extracted from this cache. In this case, since the URL acquisition request is not transmitted to the gateway computer, the access log of the gateway computer includes the HTM indicated by “http://www.news/”.
The L page will appear only once.

According to the tabulation result shown in FIG.
Since L is also one appearance frequency, as described above, according to the method of determining the user's request degree based on the appearance frequency,
Any URL will be considered to have the same user request level. However, in practice, the user will later
L is an HTML page indicated by “http://www.news/”, and URL is an H page indicated by “http: //www.hello.nara/”
If the user accesses the TML page again and a new link is created, it is expected that an access operation of accessing the new link is likely to be performed. At this time, the URL “http: //www.n
ews / 1.html ”and“ http://www.news/2.html ”are not expected to be accessed again.

That is, as described above, in the method of judging the degree of user's request based on the frequency of appearance, when the hypertext has a multi-layered tree structure, the URL of the lower-level file object can be obtained by using the URL alone. Since the access frequency is calculated and the importance of the URL is determined,
This means that the judgment reflecting the actual user request level is not performed. Therefore, the results shown by such a method will include a lot of useless data,
In some cases, useful information is not shown for the user.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to determine what page a user refers to as a reference page in a hypertext system such as WWW. It is an object of the present invention to provide an information source observation device and an information source observation method capable of totalizing and presenting a list of reference sources to a user, and a computer-readable recording medium recording an information source observation program.

[0019]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, an information source observation device of the present invention browses a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected to a network on a client computer. In the information source observation device used at this time, reference information storage means for storing, as reference information, address information of a reference source data file of a data file accessed from a client computer, and referencing the above reference information for each address information Counting means for calculating the reference frequency of the original data file, and frame definition page elimination means for correcting so as to reduce the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined. .

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information source observation method for browsing, on a client computer, a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected to a network. In the observation method, a step of saving, as reference information, address information of a reference source data file of the data file accessed from the client computer,
Calculating the reference frequency of the reference source data file by totalizing the reference information for each address information, and correcting the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined so as to reduce the reference frequency. It is characterized by having.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer-readable recording medium storing an information source observing program, wherein a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected to a network is transmitted to a client computer. Reference information storage means for storing, as reference information, address information of a reference source data file of a data file accessed from a client computer in a computer readable recording medium storing an information source observation program used for browsing on a computer. Counting means for calculating the reference frequency of the reference source data file by totalizing the above reference information for each address information, and eliminating the frame definition page for reducing the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined Means It is characterized by recording the source observation program for realizing on a computer.

According to the above arrangement and method, the reference information storage means (step) stores the address information of the reference source data file of the data file accessed from the client computer as reference information, and the counting means (step) stores the address information of the reference file. Since the reference information is totaled for each address information of the reference source data file, it is possible to grasp the data file frequently used as the reference source.

In addition, the frame definition page elimination means (step) is modified so as to reduce the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined. It is possible to reduce and eliminate noise caused by a data file having no value, and to present a data file containing more useful information to a user. For example, the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined can be corrected to 0 or 1.

Thus, an information source serving as a reference starting point of a data file such as multimedia data can be automatically found based on statistics of reference frequency, and this can be presented to the user, thereby improving the user interface. . Further, the processing can be speeded up and the information access time of the user can be reduced.

Therefore, according to the above configuration and method, in a computer system in which a server computer and a client computer are connected via a network, a client computer refers to a multimedia document having a hypertext structure on the server computer. Can be easily performed.

Further, in order to solve the above problem, the information source observing device of the present invention is characterized in that the frame definition page exclusion means corrects the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined to zero. Features.

According to the above configuration, the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined can be corrected to 0, and completely removed from the statistics of the reference frequency. Therefore, pages having no value as a user information source can be removed from the reference frequency statistics, and the address information of the data file containing more useful information can be presented to the user.

Further, the information source observation device of the present invention has a frame detecting means for determining whether or not a data file accessed from a client computer contains a frame definition character string in order to solve the above problem. It is characterized by doing.

According to the above arrangement, the frame detecting means can determine whether or not the data file accessed from the client computer contains a frame definition character string. For example, a frame definition character string can be detected by pattern matching with a data file. Therefore, when a frame definition character string is detected in a data file, it can be determined that a frame is defined in the data file, and it is possible to correct the reference frequency of the data file.

[0030]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS [Base Technology] As a base technology of the present invention, a URL actually accessed by a user is described.
There is a method of statistically estimating the information source URL of the user from the relationship of the hyperlinks (Japanese Patent Application No. Hei 11-118).
No. 28647). In the following, this technology will be described with reference to FIGS.
This will be described with reference to 5, 6, 8 (a), 14, 15 (a) and (b).

First, consider a system including a plurality of server computers for providing information, a gateway computer, and a client computer. Note that the configuration of this system may be considered to be a configuration in which the frame detection unit 21, the frame URL storage unit 22, and the frame URL elimination unit 23 are removed from the system shown in FIG. Therefore, the gateway computer corresponds to information source observation means 2 (FIG. 1) described later. Therefore, hereinafter, the gateway computer will be referred to as an information source observation unit.

For example, as shown in FIG. 14, there is a hyperlink to five article texts on an HTML page “http://www.news/” that provides certain news information (“Mainichi Shimbun”). Assume that the user has accessed all five of them. After that, the user accesses an HTML page “http: // sharp /” that provides another information (the title of this page is “sharp information”), and the three HTML pages linked there and 1 It is assumed that the user has accessed the movie files “a.mov”. In addition,
“A.mov” is hyperlinked to “main.html”. The history information (URL access log) at this time is as shown in FIG.

At this time, the information source observing means transmits the reference information included in the request header when the user accesses the URL.
The rer header is observed, and the accessed URL is
Is stored in the gateway unit (reference information storage means) to create reference statistics. In addition, Refere
The r header is a standard header defined in the HTTP protocol, and is introduced to record which URL the URL accessed to the Web server was linked to.

FIG. 5 shows the history including the Referer header. FIG. 8A shows the appearance frequency of the Referer header as statistics, which is reference statistics. This reference statistic indicates the frequency of reference to the hyperlink. FIG. 8A shows the data type text / html.
Or it is the sum of movie.

Based on this history, the information source observing means determines that the information source of the user is “http: // w
ww.news/ ”and“ http: //sharp/main.ht for video data.
ml ”, can be estimated.

Here, "http: // sharp /" (FIG. 14)
Is a frame definition page in which a frame configuration page is defined. That is, “http: // sharp /” is replaced with “titl
e.html ”,“ menu.html ”and“ main.html ”
It is defined so that the ML pages are combined and appear as one page.

The frame definition page is set using the <frameset> tag introduced in HTML version 3.2. The frame definition page is the Netscape C
It can be displayed on a WWW browser such as ommunicator or Internet Explorer. Note that the frame definition page tends to be used more and more in the WWW world.

FIG. 15 shows a frame definition page “ht”
15 (a) and a display example thereof (FIG. 15 (b)) of tp: // sharp / ". FIG. 15 (a)
As shown in (b), “http: // sharp /” is changed to “title.h
"tml" is assigned to display 33 dots from the top, "menu.html" is displayed 150 dots from the left of the remaining lower portion, and "main.html" is displayed to the right.

The browser accessing such “http: // sharp /” detects the <frameset> tag, interprets it as a frame definition page, and reads the HT
MLs are sequentially accessed. And “http: // sharp /”
Has three automatically accessed HTML pages:
It is combined with the layout defined by the <frameset> tag and displayed.

As described above, the frame definition page “http: // sharp /” has three components “title.h”.
tml ”,“ menu.html ”, and“ main.html ”, so the browser displays“ http: // sharp ”in the Referer header.
Access each configuration page with "/". As a result,
Referer despite having accessed the frame definition page (“http: // sharp /”) only once
In the header statistics, “http: // sharp /” is counted three times (FIG. 8A).

As described above, when the reference source URL is the frame definition page, the number of accesses of the user is not accurately reflected in the statistics. Further, the frame definition page is a fixed one that specifies the display size of each of the constituent pages, and has no value as a user information source. Therefore, Referer
The statistics using the header may include noise due to the frame definition page, and if the number of frame-constituting pages is large, the noise increases in proportion thereto.

Embodiment An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 9.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram schematically showing a configuration of a computer network system according to the present embodiment. The computer network system includes a server computer 1, an information source observation unit (information source observation device).
2 and a client computer 3. Although only one server computer 1 is shown in FIG. 1, the server computer 1 corresponds to a plurality of server computers connected to a network such as the Internet.

The server computer 1 stores data files such as HTML pages and various multimedia data in the data file storage device 1A. And
For example, server data called HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) daemon manages these data and access from external computers.

The client computer 3 has a HT
A browser (information browser) 3A, which is software capable of displaying ML pages and various multimedia data, is provided. Then, the user operates the browser 3A on the client computer 3 to
A desired HTML page and various multimedia data can be browsed.

The information source observing means 2 corresponds to, for example, a gateway computer provided on a firewall, an HTTP proxy server computer provided on the Internet, and relays HTTP requests (requests) and responses (responses). It is based on what you do. The information source observing means 2 includes a reference information extracting means 4, a reference information storing means 5, a counting means 6, a sorting means 7, a data converting means 8, an information updating means 9, an information storing means 10, and a searching means 11. , A frame detecting unit 21, a frame URL storing unit 22
It is provided with. The counting means 6 is provided with a frame URL exclusion means (frame definition file exclusion means) 23. The description of these means will be described later.

Further, as shown in FIG. 2, the information source observing means 2 can be built in the client computer 3. As described above, examples of the HTTP proxy server that can be built into the client computer 3 include Sharp Mobile Proxy (product name) and Internet Rapid Service (product name) manufactured by Sharp Corporation.

Further, the information source observing means 2 can be configured as a part of a browser in the client computer 3.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram schematically showing the configuration of the client computer 3 (FIG. 2). As shown in FIG. 3, the client computer 3 has a CPU (cent
ralprocessing unit) 12, RAM (random access m)
emory), and a nonvolatile memory 1 such as a hard disk or a flash memory.
4. Network I / O (input / output) 15 serving as an interface with an external network, input device 16 including a keyboard and a mouse, and display device 17
Which are connected by a bus 18. The client computer 3 having such a configuration includes:
It can be constituted by a computer generally called a personal computer.

Here, the operation of the information source observing means 2 when browsing an HTML page on the WWW by the browser 3A in the client computer 3 will be described.

First, a certain HTML page is displayed on the browser 3A.
From the state displayed above, point the link embedded in the HTML page with the mouse cursor,
It is assumed that a click accesses a URL (address information) of a link destination by clicking. For example, FIG.
In the example shown in FIG. 0, from the state where the URL is displaying an HTML page indicated by “http://www.news/”,
It is assumed that the user clicks a link indicating the HTML page of "new book information". At this time, the client computer 3 sends a TCP / IP (transmission control protocol) to the information source observing means 2 via the network I / O 15.
A connection of “tocol / internet porotocol” is opened, and a request header as shown in FIG. 12 is issued.

The Referer header included in the request header is issued by the browser, and indicates the reference source information of the requested URL. FIG.
In the example shown in the figure, the URL “http: //www.n
ews / 1.html ”is the HT whose URL is“ http://www.news/ ”
This indicates that the request is made by a link from the ML page (reference source data file). Note that such a request header is a standard header defined in the specification of HTTP 1.0. Further, such information of the request header is defined on the assumption that it is normally recorded by a server computer.

The information source observing means 2 receives the request header as described above, establishes a connection to the server computer 1 whose URL is indicated by "www.news", and receives the corresponding file ("1.html"). Then, the data is transferred to the browser 3A of the client computer 3. At this time, the response data received by the information source observation means 2 from the server computer 1 is:
As shown in FIG. 13, the response header and the text data (H
TML data).

In FIG. 13, Content in the response header
The t-Type header indicates the multimedia type of the following data, and in the example shown in FIG. 13, indicates that the following data is text data (HTML data).

The information source observing means 2 utilizes the information contained in the request header and the response header as described above,
Among the accessed URLs, the reference source information and the multimedia type of the URL indicating the normal response are acquired and recorded as the items of the access log. Thus, for example, if the tally is performed by paying attention to the reference source information in the access log, it is possible to sort the URLs that have become the reference sources of the accessed URLs in order of frequency and to present them to the user as an information source list. .

The information source observing means 2 scans the text part of the response body and, if there is a <frameset> tag (FIG. 15).
(A)), since it is a frame definition page, its URL
As a frame definition page. Then, when creating the reference statistics, the URL of the frame definition page is deleted from the statistics. Thus, it is possible to prevent noise from being mixed in the reference statistics based on the frame definition page. Since the <frame> tag is also used for the frame definition, this may be detected similarly.

Further, the reference source information can be totaled for each multimedia data type. For example, it is also possible to classify data types such as text data, moving image data, and music data and to present them to the user as an information source list.

As the information source observation means 2, HTTP
In the case of a computer that accumulates a cache, such as a proxy server computer or a gateway computer, a configuration in which the cache is spontaneously updated for a URL frequently referred to as a reference source based on the information source list Is also possible.

Next, the flow of processing in the information source observation means 2 will be described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. In the following description, it is assumed that the information source observing means 2 is built in the client computer 3.
Almost the same processing is performed also in the configuration provided outside the.

First, the information source observation means 2 opens a server socket using the network I / O 15 and enters a standby state for receiving a relay request (S1). If a relay request has been received, the process proceeds to step S2. As described above, when the information source observation means 2 is built in the client computer 3, the information source observation means 2
Communicates with the browser 3A via the memory 13.

Next, the information source observing means 2 uses the browser 3
When the relay request is received from A, the reference information extracting means 4 extracts the Referer header which is the reference source information from the request header, and temporarily stores the contents in the memory 13 (S2).

Next, the information source observing means 2 opens a connection to the server computer 1 and relays the request header (S3). At this time, if the requested URL does not exist, an error message is presented to the user by the display device 17 of the client computer 3, and the information of the Referer header temporarily stored in the memory 13 is discarded (S4).

The information source observing means 2 sends the requested UR
When L exists (when the response code is normal), the response data from the server computer 1 corresponding to the URL is received, and the response data is relayed to the browser 3A of the client computer 3. At the same time,
The reference information storage unit 5 stores the requested URL together with the data type detected based on the Content-type header included in the response header, the reference source information detected based on the Referer header, and the title of the reference source. The information is recorded and stored in the nonvolatile memory 14 (S5). FIG. 5 shows an example of the stored data of the stored reference information.

Here, the data type of the data to be stored includes text / html and the like, but only the data type specified in advance may be stored. When the Content-type header is text / html, the HTML data of the response data is parsed and <title
> By extracting the part enclosed by tags, it may be saved as the title of the corresponding page at the same time.

The frame detecting means 21 parses the HTML data of the response data, and if a tag for setting a frame such as a <frameset> tag is included, the URL is determined as a frame definition page. Frame UR
It is stored in the L storage means 22. In FIG. 6, the result of the frame determination is described as true / false.

Here, the detection of the <frameset> tag is performed only when the Content-type header of the response body is text / html. Specifically, the CPU 12 can detect the response body temporarily stored in the memory 13 by performing pattern matching of the character string “<frameset” or the character string “<frame”.

The frame URL storage means 22 stores the URL in which the frame is set in the non-volatile memory 14 in a simple list format in which one line is described in chronological order as shown in FIG. For example, in the example of FIG. 14, “http: /
/ sharp / ”includes the frame definition tag (FIG. 15
(A)) is recorded in the frame URL storage means 22.
Note that the frame URL storage means 22 may have a FIFO (first-in first-out) structure in which the oldest ones are deleted line by line when the storage number reaches a predetermined maximum number.

The above-described reference information storage processing is repeatedly performed until the storage data reaches a certain number (S
6). That is, (N
O), the process returns to step S1, and when the number of stored data reaches a certain number (YES), the process proceeds to the next step (S7).

For the stored data that has reached a certain number, the counting means 6 totals the number of times used for reference for each reference source information, and generates total data (S7). At this time, counting can be performed except for the frame definition page. That is, the frame URL elimination unit 23
The URL included in the ferer header is compared with the record in the frame URL storage means 22, and those that match are not counted.

FIGS. 8A and 8B show examples of the sorting result. Note that FIG. 8A shows an example of the reference information storage data shown in FIG.
Shows the result of counting text / html or movie.
FIG. 8B shows the result of counting except for the frame definition page.

The elimination of the frame page by the frame URL elimination means 23 is also possible by counting the frame definition page with a statistically low weight. That is, since the frame definition page specifies the HTML page to be composed as <frame src = “./ title.html”> (FIG. 15A), the number of pages to configure is N
If the number is counted, the frame definition page can be statistically weighted, for example, with a weight of 1 / N. As a result, the frame definition page is not completely excluded from statistics, and statistics can be performed with low weight. in this case,
One access to the frame definition page can be counted as one reference frequency regardless of the number of pages constituting the frame definition page.
Therefore, based on this statistic, it is possible to inspect the new arrival information, and it is possible to investigate whether or not there is new arrival information in each of the constituent HTML pages of the frame.

Subsequently, the totaling data is sorted by data type by the sorting means 7 (S8). Note that the sorting of the reference frequency can be performed at the same time.

The data of the sorted reference information is converted by the data conversion means 8 into a data format, such as HTML data, which can be displayed by the browser 3A, and displayed on the display device 17 as an information source list. Then, it is presented to the user (S9). FIG. 9 shows an example of such an information source list.

Since information indicating the title of the page of the reference source information is attached to the information source list, it is necessary to grasp what information the user using the client computer 3 has a habit of requesting. Can be. That is, this information source list can be used as a preference database. For example, in the example shown in FIG. 9, it can be seen that the user considers the daily newspaper, local information of Nara prefecture, and the like to be important as information sources. Further, since the total of the reference source information is presented for each data type, it is possible to grasp important reference source information for each data type.

Here, the information source observing means 2 uses the accessed URL data as a cache to store the information
Let us consider a case where a certain amount is accumulated in the storage area. in this case,
The information updating means 9 spontaneously acquires information from the server computer 1 at predetermined time intervals based on the data of the sorted reference information, and updates the data stored in the information storage means 10. (S10). Such information update processing is performed based on the sorted reference information data, for example, in the order of high frequency as the reference source in all data types, or in the high frequency as the reference source in the data type specified by the user. Done.

In the information updating process by the information updating means 9, if a process of automatically collecting file objects at a link level of 2 or higher is performed on the URLs listed in the information source list, the URL is linked from the URL as a reference source. The stored data, that is, data that is likely to be accessed by the user, is automatically stored in the information storage unit 10. In other words, if you increase the link level,
Automatic collection of related information from a URL as a reference source to a wide range of linked information will be performed automatically. However, since the information is collected from URLs used by the user as reference sources, there is a possibility that the user may use the information. High and accurate information collection becomes possible. As a result, even when the user accesses data linked from the URL of the reference source, the data can be extracted from the cache data, thereby improving the access speed and reducing the network traffic. it can.

Further, as described above, the search means 1 searches the file objects automatically collected at a predetermined link level or higher for the URLs listed in the information source list.
It is also possible to perform a search according to 1 and present the result to the user. In this case, a search is performed on the file object for which information has been collected based on the information source of the user.
It is possible to provide search results with high freshness of information and suitable for user needs.

The above steps S1 to S
The information source observing means 2 repeats the processing of 10.

As described above, URLs frequently used by the user as reference sources are ranked higher in the result of totalizing the reference information and sorting them in the order of appearance frequency.
Therefore, if such a sort result is presented to the user, the user can find out where the desired information can be obtained from his / her own information source list, and follow the link from this information source list. Thus, information can be easily obtained.

In addition, the URL of the frame definition page which has no meaning as a user information source can be excluded. Thus, by deleting the frame definition URL from the reference statistics, it is possible to improve the accuracy as the true user information source statistics of the reference statistical information. That is, since the reference statistical information is used for predicting new link information and for pre-downloading the new link information, it is possible to detect new link information with higher accuracy and to eliminate useless access to the frame definition URL. Investigation time can be reduced.

As described above, the information source observing apparatus according to the present invention records and stats reference URL information, presents it to the user, and automatically updates information based on the list. Is interpreted, and if it is a frame definition page, it is stored and removed from the reference statistics.

More specifically, the information source observation device is realized by an information source observation means for relaying a request from a browser to a server computer and relaying a response to the browser. The information source observing means includes a reference information extracting means (reference source information extracting means), a reference information storing means, a frame, and a frame. Detecting means (HTML frame detecting means), frame URL storing means (frame definition file name storing means), counting means provided with frame URL excluding means (frame definition file name excluding means), sorting means, and data converting means (Display means).

More specifically, the information source observing means is a URL
Reference information extraction means for extracting reference information included in a request header of a request protocol, reference information storage means for extracting information indicating a specific media type such as text from the data type of a URL response header, and interpreting an HTML expression of a file Frame detecting means for detecting a frame definition, a frame URL storing means for storing a frame definition together with a URL name when the frame definition is included, a counting means for performing statistics for each reference information, and a frame URL for generating reference information statistics. Means for removing the frame URL by comparing it with the frame URL stored in the storage means, sorting means for sorting and rearranging the statistics of these reference information, and storing the statistical results in a storage device and presenting them to the user. Data conversion means for converting data may be provided. In addition, it has information updating means, and based on the statistical results,
The information may be updated using the information storage means held by the information source observation means.

The information source observing means includes means for extracting and storing the reference URL source information from the Referer header included in the request header of the URL request protocol, and a specific media type such as text from the data type of the URL response header. Means for extracting information indicating the reference URL, means for selecting and storing the reference URL source information for each media type using means for determining whether or not the URL matches the target media type;
Means for calculating statistics of these reference URL source information;
Means for detecting whether a frame definition tag is included in the RL page, means for storing the URL at which the frame definition tag is detected, and means for deleting the URL from the statistical result; storing the statistical result in a storage device and presenting it to the user And means for performing the operation. In addition, a configuration that activates means for automatically collecting information based on the statistical result may be employed.

Thus, the information source observing means aggregates the statistical information of the reference information of the file object,
It can be presented to the client computer. Then, when creating the reference frequency statistics of the page having the hyperlink, the frame definition page is detected and removed from the statistics, whereby highly accurate user access reference frequency statistics can be created.

As described above, the information source observing apparatus according to the present invention records the reference source URL information included in the request header and obtains statistics when creating the access log as shown in FIG. Remove the frame definition page from the reference statistics when recording the frequency of access to linked information. As a result, a page that is not valuable as an information source such as a frame definition page can be removed, and a list of URLs containing more useful information can be shown to the user. Also, the gateway computer can automatically update the information in the built-in cache based on the list obtained from the statistics of the reference source URL. Thereby, the information can be automatically updated more efficiently.

If the above-mentioned means is incorporated in the browser software, unnecessary information sources can be eliminated and a lot of useful information can be presented to the user. Also,
The browser can voluntarily obtain these useful information sources automatically.

Therefore, according to the information source observation device of the present invention, in a hypertext system such as WWW, an information source URL (information source address) indicating from which page a user refers to a URL page.
In the process of generating statistics by estimating the information source of the user, the frame definition HTML page can be removed from the statistics. Accordingly, it is possible to remove noise due to the frame definition page and to observe the information source with higher accuracy.

The above embodiment does not limit the scope of the present invention, and various changes can be made within the scope of the present invention. In particular, in the present embodiment, H on the Internet
Although the TML has been described as an example, the configuration of the network and the format of the file object are not limited to this.

Lastly, the present invention provides a method for using a plurality of devices (for example,
Whether applied to a system composed of a host computer, a terminal computer, an interface device, a network device, a reader, a printer, etc., or to a device composed of one device (eg, a portable computer, a word processing device, etc.) Good.

Further, an object of the present invention is to provide a recording medium in which a program code (executable program, intermediate code program, source program) of an information source observation program which is software for realizing the above-described functions is recorded in a computer-readable manner. Is supplied to a system or an apparatus, and a computer (or CPU or MPU) of the system or the apparatus reads out and executes a program code recorded on a recording medium. In this case, the program code itself read from the recording medium realizes the above-described function, and the recording medium on which the program code is recorded constitutes the present invention.

A recording medium for supplying the program code can be configured to be separable from a system or an apparatus. Further, the recording medium may be a medium that fixedly carries the program code so that the program code can be supplied. Even if the recording medium is mounted on a system or an apparatus so that a computer can directly read the recorded program code, the recording medium may be connected to a system or apparatus as an external storage device via a program reading apparatus connected to the system or the apparatus. It may be mounted so that it can be read.

For example, the recording medium may be a tape system such as a magnetic tape or a cassette tape, a magnetic disk such as a floppy (registered trademark) disk / hard disk, or a CD.
A disk system including an optical disk such as ROM / MO / MD / DVD / CD-R, a card system such as an IC card (including a memory card) / optical card, or a mask ROM /
A semiconductor memory system such as an EPROM / EEPROM / flash ROM can be used.

The program code may be recorded so that the computer can read out from the recording medium and directly execute the program code, or the program code is transferred from the recording medium to the program storage area of the main storage, and then read from the main storage by the computer. It may be recorded so that it can be executed.

Further, the recording medium may be a medium that carries the program code in a fluid manner so that the program code can be supplied via a communication network or the like. In this case, the system or device can be configured to be connectable to a communication network (including the Internet or the like), and the program code can be supplied by downloading from the communication network.

A program for reading a program code from a recording medium and storing the program code in a main memory;
It is assumed that the program for downloading the program code from the communication network is stored in a system or an apparatus in advance so as to be executable by a computer.

The functions described above are realized not only by executing the above-described program code read out by the computer, but also by the OS running on the computer performing one of the actual processes based on the instruction of the program code. It is also realized by performing part or all.

Further, the above-mentioned function is realized after the above-mentioned program code read from the above-mentioned recording medium is written into a memory provided in a function expansion board mounted on a computer or a function expansion unit connected to the computer. Based on the instructions of the program code, the functions are also realized by the CPU or the like provided in the function expansion board or function expansion unit performing part or all of the actual processing.

[0099]

As described above, the information source observation device of the present invention is used for browsing a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected via a network on a client computer. A reference information storage means for storing, as reference information, address information of a reference data file of a data file accessed from a client computer;
A frame definition page having counting means for calculating the reference frequency of the reference source data file by totalizing the reference information for each address information, and correcting the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined so as to reduce the reference frequency This is a configuration having exclusion means.

The information source observing method according to the present invention is, as described above, an information source observing method for browsing a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected to a network on a client computer. Storing the address information of the reference source data file of the data file accessed from the client computer as reference information, and calculating the reference frequency of the reference source data file by totalizing the reference information for each address information And modifying the reference source data file in which the frame is defined so as to reduce the reference frequency.

The computer-readable recording medium storing the information source observation program according to the present invention allows a client computer to view a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected to a network as described above. Reference information storage means for storing, as reference information, address information of a reference data file of a data file accessed from a client computer on a computer-readable recording medium recording an information source observation program used when performing Counting means for counting information for each address information and calculating a reference frequency of the reference source data file;
It is configured to record an information source observation program for causing a computer to implement a frame definition page exclusion unit that corrects the reference source data file in which a frame is defined so as to reduce the reference frequency.

Therefore, the frame definition page elimination means (step) is modified so as to reduce the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined. It is possible to reduce and eliminate noise caused by a data file having no value, and to present a data file containing more useful information to a user.

Therefore, an information source serving as a reference starting point of a data file such as multimedia data can be automatically found based on statistics of reference frequency and can be presented to the user, so that the user interface is improved. It works. Further, there is an effect that the processing can be speeded up and the information access time of the user can be reduced.

Therefore, according to the above configuration and method, in a computer system in which a server computer and a client computer are connected via a network, a client computer refers to a multimedia document having a hypertext structure on the server computer. This makes it possible to perform the processing easily.

As described above, according to the information source observation apparatus of the present invention, the frame definition page exclusion means sets the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined to 0.
The configuration is modified to

Therefore, the reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined can be corrected to 0, and completely removed from the statistics of the reference frequency.
Therefore, there is an effect that pages having no value as a user information source can be removed from the statistics of the reference frequency, and address information of a data file containing much more useful information can be presented to the user.

As described above, the information source observation device of the present invention further comprises a frame detecting means for determining whether or not a data file accessed from a client computer contains a frame definition character string. It is.

Therefore, the frame detecting means can determine whether or not the data file accessed from the client computer contains a frame definition character string. Therefore, when a frame definition character string is detected in a data file, it can be determined that a frame is defined in the data file, and the reference frequency of the data file can be corrected. It works.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram schematically illustrating a configuration of an information source observation device according to an embodiment of the present invention, showing a case where the information source observation device is provided separately from a client computer.

FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram schematically illustrating another configuration of the information source observation device according to the embodiment of the present invention, showing a case where the information source observation device is provided in a client computer.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram schematically showing a physical configuration of a client computer including the information source observation device shown in FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart schematically showing an operation of the information source observation device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2;

5 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of history information to which URL appearance frequency information created by the information source observation device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 is added.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a URL access log created by the information source observation device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2;

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing a data structure of a frame URL storage means provided in the information source observation device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2;

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram showing frequency statistical information as reference source URL information created by the information source observation device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2; FIG. 8A shows data types text / html and mo;
An example in which the reference URLs of the URL that is vie are aggregated,
(B) shows an example in which the frame definition page is excluded from (a) and tabulated.

9 is an explanatory diagram showing a display example of data generated by data conversion means provided in the information source observation device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG.

FIG. 10 is a conceptual diagram showing an example of a state of a link between an HTML page and a data file on the WWW.

FIG. 11 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of an access log stored when accessing the HTML page and the data file shown in FIG. 10;

FIG. 12 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a request header issued from a client computer.

FIG. 13 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a response header issued from a server computer.

FIG. 14 is a conceptual diagram showing an example of a state of a link between an HTML page and a data file on the WWW.

15A and 15B are explanatory diagrams of a frame definition page, and FIG.
Shows a description example of the HTML of the frame definition page, and (b) shows the display state of (a) in the browser.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 server computer 2 information observing means (information source observing device) 3 client computer 5 reference information storing means 6 counting means 21 frame detecting means 23 frame URL excluding means (frame definition page excluding means)

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. An information source observation device used when browsing a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected via a network on a client computer, wherein reference data of the data file accessed from the client computer is provided. Reference information storage means for storing the address information of the file as reference information, and counting means for counting the reference information for each address information and calculating the reference frequency of the reference source data file, and a reference in which a frame is defined. An information source observation device, comprising: a frame definition page exclusion unit for correcting so as to reduce a reference frequency of an original data file. 2. The frame definition page exclusion means sets a reference frequency of a reference source data file in which a frame is defined to 0.
The information source observation device according to claim 1, wherein the information source is corrected. 3. An information source according to claim 1, further comprising a frame detecting means for determining whether or not the data file accessed from the client computer contains a frame definition character string. Observation equipment. 4. An information source observing method for browsing a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected to a network on a client computer, wherein a reference file of the data file accessed from the client computer is provided. A step of storing the address information as reference information; a step of calculating the reference frequency of the reference source data file by totalizing the reference information for each address information; and a reference frequency of the reference source data file in which the frame is defined. A method for observing an information source, the method including a step of correcting so as to reduce the number of times. 5. A computer-readable recording medium on which an information source observation program used for browsing a data file having a hyperlink structure on a server computer connected by a network on a client computer is recorded. Reference information storage means for storing the address information of the reference source data file of the accessed data file as reference information; counting means for calculating the reference frequency of the reference source data file by totalizing the reference information for each address information; A computer-readable recording medium that records an information source observation program for causing a computer to implement a frame definition page exclusion unit that corrects a reference source data file in which a frame is defined so as to reduce the reference frequency.