JP2001344246A - Method for preparing term table data base and method for retrieving electronic document - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method for reducing the redundancy of a retrieved result due to the ambiguity of meaning of a retrieving keyword and the variety of meaning relation among plural retrieving keywords in the retrieval of an electronic document and realizing a highly efficient electronic document retrieval. SOLUTION: The network address of an electronic document file group stored in a computer connected to a computer network is specified, a sentence including a specific term is extracted from the contents of the electronic document file group on the basis of a previously prepared extraction rule and an explanation category indicating which explanation document for terms corresponds to the extracted sentence, the network address of an electronic document file in which the extracted terms appears, the term, sentence including the term, and the type of the electronic document file are registered in a term table data base as a data set of five items.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a glossary database creation method and an electronic document search method. More specifically, the present invention constructs a glossary database of terms serving as search conditions created by extracting, from an electronic document, a semantic relationship between a word serving as a search condition and a specific word in an electronic document. The present invention relates to a method and an electronic document search method realized by using the glossary database as an interface.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art With the spread and expansion of high-speed computer networks, many search services for searching electronic document information have been provided. Most of them are based on full-text searches by matching search keywords. However, in many cases, satisfactory search results cannot be obtained for users for the following reasons.

[0003] For example, the word "network"
It has a plurality of meanings, such as "communication network" and "program supply network for television and radio stations". For this reason, even if the user inputs the word "network" as a search keyword with the intention of "communication network", documents other than "communication network" are also output as search results. That is, the user must select the desired document from the huge output.

As a method of solving the problem caused by the ambiguity of a search keyword, there is a method of specifying a plurality of search keywords. In the above example, the word “communication” is added as a search keyword to the search keyword “network”, and the logical product (A) of the two search keywords is added.
By setting ND) as a search condition, it is expected that the meaning is limited and the search results are narrowed down to some extent.
However, since the relationship between search keywords in a sentence has diversity, for example, "network" AN
D When "Communication" is used as a search condition, as a result, not only "network for communication" but also documents different from the intended one such as "network between communication companies" are output as search results. It is not rare.

[0005] As a method of extending the range of meaning of a search keyword or obtaining a synonym, there is known a method of constructing a thesaurus database in advance. However, the construction of a thesaurus database is manual, and the amount of work involved in constructing a database for one specialized field is enormous. Also, a method has been proposed in which related words are compiled into a database based on the co-occurrence relation of words obtained from a document group and presented as a search result. However, the similarity in the meaning between actual words is low. It often happens that search results become redundant.

[0006] The invention of this application has been made in view of the circumstances described above, and in the retrieval of electronic documents, the ambiguity of the meaning of search keywords and the diversity of semantic relationships among a plurality of search keywords. It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for realizing a highly efficient electronic document search by reducing the redundancy of the search result by the search.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention solves the above-mentioned problems by designating a network address of an electronic document file group stored in a computer connected to a computer network. Based on the extraction rules created in advance from the text of the electronic document file group, a sentence containing a specific term is extracted based on the extraction rule, and the commentary category that indicates what kind of commentary this term is for the term is extracted. The network address of the electronic document file in which the term is published, the term, the sentence in which the term is described, and the title of the electronic document file are registered in the glossary database as a set of five items. Provides a method for creating a glossary database.

Further, the invention of this application executes a search based on a search condition input by a user in a glossary database constructed by the above-described glossary database creation method, and searches for registered term data. If the conditions are met, the data set to which the term data belongs is output as a search result, and the user sets the network address of the electronic document based on the network address data included in the data set selected from the output search results. An electronic document search method characterized by referring to and outputting the contents of an electronic document stored at a referred network address.

Further, the invention of this application provides a glossary database constructed by the above-described glossary database creation method, a data receiving function of receiving data transmitted from an electronic document search client, and a data receiving function of receiving data from an electronic document search client. A glossary database search function for performing a search on network address data stored in the glossary database based on the searched search data;
An electronic document receiving function of referring to a network address of an electronic document based on network address data received from the electronic document search client, and receiving electronic document data stored at the referenced network address;
An electronic document search server having a data transmission function for transmitting search result data obtained by a glossary database search function and electronic document data obtained by an electronic document reception function to an electronic document search client; A data transmission function of transmitting to the electronic document search server data relating to search conditions input by the external input device and network address data selected and input by the user through the external input device; search result data and electronic data transmitted from the electronic document search server; An electronic document, wherein an electronic document search client having a data receiving function of receiving document data and an electronic document search client having a data external output function of outputting the received data to an external output device is connected by a computer network. Provide a search system. In this electronic document search system, a computer network is the Internet, an electronic document search server has a WWW server function, an electronic document to be searched is an HTML document, and an electronic document search client has a WWW browser function. It is characterized by having.

The invention of this application also provides a computer-readable storage medium recorded as a program that causes the computer to execute the glossary database creation method and the electronic document search method.

[0011]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION The invention of this application has the features as described above, and embodiments thereof will be described below.

An electronic document search system for realizing an electronic document search method according to the present invention has a basic configuration including a glossary database, an electronic document search server, and an electronic document search client connected to a computer network.

In the glossary database, the relationship between the terms and the text of the electronic document file is registered as data. That is, what kind of information about the search keyword is the content of the text described in the electronic document file is registered as data. The electronic document search according to the invention of this application is executed using this glossary database as an interface, and it is premised that this glossary database is constructed in advance. Figure 1 shows the procedure for building a glossary database.
It is shown below using.

First, a network (101) having an electronic document reading function refers to a network address list file (102). The network address described in the network address list file (102) is referred to, and the network address list file (102) is selected from the electronic document file group (104) stored in the computer connected to the computer network (103). The electronic document file stored at the network address specified by ()) is read and registered in the auxiliary storage device (105). Next, the document file group stored in the auxiliary storage device (105) is read out by the computer (106) having the term extraction function, and the term extraction rule described in the term extraction rule file (107) created in advance is used. Is applied, and terms that can be search keywords are extracted. The term extraction is automatically performed by general-purpose information extraction software using pattern analysis on the character surface of the electronic document.

The term extraction rule is set, for example, as follows so that extraction is performed only when a sentence gives some explanation about a term. (1) A character string surrounded by "(", ")" (parentheses) immediately after a character string composed of kanji or alphanumeric characters is extracted. (2) “A” is “B”. From the expression "
Character strings corresponding to A and B are extracted. (3) Develop "A". The character string corresponding to A is extracted from the expression "."

When the term extraction rule as exemplified above is used, if there is an extracted sentence in the document file, it is determined that the sentence includes commentary on a specific term, and the extracted sentence is extracted. The five items of the term, the network address of the extracted document file, the comment category indicating what the sentence is about the term, the title of the electronic document file, and the extracted sentence are one unit. Is registered in the glossary database (108). Here, as the explanation category, “definition”, “translation”, “property”, “synonym”, “antonymous”, etc. regarding the word are set as basic items, and furthermore, the attribute of the term is also set. Various commentary categories are additionally set as appropriate.

More specifically, the above term extraction rule (2)
In, "B" is determined to belong to the basic item of "definition" of "A". Term extraction rules are prepared in advance for each of the commentary categories.

An electronic document search method according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS.

First, the user of the electronic document search service operates the external input device (2) of the electronic document search client (201).
02), a search condition is input. The input search conditions are transmitted to the electronic document search server (203) by the data transmission function of the electronic document search client (201).

In the electronic document search server (203), a glossary database (2) is created based on the received search conditions.
04) is searched for term data, and if there is one that matches the search condition, a data set (term data, network address of a document file to be a set, a comment category, a sentence, an electronic document file) relating to the term data Are transmitted to the electronic document search client (201) by the data transmission function of the electronic document search server (203) as search results.

In the electronic document search client (201), a data set (term data, address data of a document file, commentary category data, document data) as a received search result is output by an external output device (205).

Regarding the contents output to the external output device, as shown in FIG. 3, first, a search condition (301)
Hits a term registered in the glossary database, the hit term (302) is displayed in the display column (A). Further, when the search condition (301) is described in a document explaining the terms registered in the glossary database, the term to be explained (303) is displayed in the display column (B). .

When the user of the electronic document search service selects a target term from the displayed hit terms (302) using the external input device connected to the electronic document search client, the user selects the target term from FIG. As illustrated, a list of explanation categories (401) of term data corresponding to the term is displayed. Next, the user of the electronic document search service uses the external input device connected to the electronic document search client to display the displayed comment category (401).
When a target commentary category is selected from the list, as shown in FIG. 5, the text (501) of the electronic document file and the title (502) of the electronic document file relating to the selected commentary category are displayed in the display column (C). Is done.

Further, the user of the electronic document search service can
By using an external input device connected to the electronic document search client and selecting a target electronic document file title from among the displayed electronic document file titles (502), the data relating to the selection is displayed in the electronic document file. Sent to the search server, the electronic document search server reads the selected electronic document file and sends it to the electronic document search client. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 6, in the electronic document search client (601), the network address data relating to the document file selected by the electronic document search service user from the external input device (602) is stored in the electronic document search client. The data is transmitted to the electronic document search server (603) by the data transmission function of (601).

In the electronic document search server (603), based on the network address data of the document file selected by the user of the electronic document search service, a computer network in which the document file selected by the user of the electronic document search service is stored. From the computer connected to (604), the electronic document file (60
5) is read. The read electronic document file is transmitted to the electronic document search client (601),
The text is externally output by the external output device (605).
At this time, the external output device is automatically displayed such that the part corresponding to the commentary of the term selected by the user of the electronic document retrieval service in FIG. 5 comes first on the output screen.

In this application, the computer network may have any size, and the network protocol and network topology are not particularly limited. For example, a computer network is a corporate LAN or the Internet connected by TCP / IP, an electronic document search server has a function as a WWW server, and an electronic document to be searched is an HTML document. At this time, the electronic document search client has a function as a WWW browser.

Further, the method for creating a glossary database and the method for retrieving electronic documents according to the invention of this application are recorded on a storage medium as a program to be operated by a computer.

[0028]

As described above in detail, according to the invention of the present application, in the retrieval of an electronic document, the redundancy of the search result due to the polysemy of the meaning of the search keyword and the diversity of the semantic relationship between the plurality of search keywords. And a highly efficient electronic document search method is provided. According to the invention of this application, it is possible to perform a search conscious of the ambiguity of a search keyword, and a systematic search for information including information related to the search keyword is realized.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing a process and data flow in a glossary database creation method according to the invention of the present application.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a process and a data flow in an electronic document search method according to the invention of the present application.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating a screen configuration output to an external output device of an electronic document search client in the electronic document search method according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram illustrating a screen configuration output to an external output device of an electronic document search client in the electronic document search method according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram illustrating a screen configuration output to an external output device of an electronic document search client in the electronic document search method according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing a process and a data flow in the electronic document search method according to the invention of the present application.

[Explanation of symbols]

 101 Computer with Electronic Document Reading Function 102 Network Address List File 103 Computer Network 104 Electronic Document File Group 105 Auxiliary Storage 106 Computer with Term Extraction Function 107 Term Extraction Rule File 108 Glossary Database 201 Electronic Document Search Client 202 External Input Device 203 Electronic document search server 204 Glossary database 204 Electronic document search server 205 External output device 301 Search condition 302 Term 303 Term 401 Commentary category 501 Text of electronic document file 502 Title of electronic document file 601 Electronic document search client 602 External input device 603 Electronic document search server 604 Computer network 605 Electronic document file 606 Outside Equipment

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. Designating a network address of an electronic document file group stored in a computer connected to a computer network, and using a specific term based on an extraction rule created in advance from the text of these electronic document file group. Is extracted, and the description category indicating what the extracted text is a description document about the term, the network address of the electronic document file in which the extracted term is published, the term, and the term are described. A terminology database creation method characterized by registering, in a terminology database, five items of a sentence and a title of an electronic document file as a set of data. 2. A terminology database constructed by the terminology database creation method according to claim 1 is searched based on a search condition entered by a user, and registered term data matches the search condition. In this case, the data set to which the term data belongs is output as a search result, and the user refers to the network address of the electronic document based on the network address data included in the data set selected from the output search results, An electronic document search method characterized by outputting the contents of an electronic document stored at a referenced network address. 3. A terminology database constructed by the terminology database creation method according to claim 1, a data reception function for receiving data transmitted from an electronic document search client, and a search condition received from the electronic document search client. A glossary database search function that executes a search for network address data stored in a glossary database based on data, and refers to and references the network address of an electronic document based on network address data received from an electronic document search client. An electronic document receiving function for receiving electronic document data stored at a given network address, an electronic document search client for search result data obtained by a glossary database search function, and electronic document data obtained by the electronic document receiving function Send to An electronic document search server having a data transmission function for communicating with the electronic document search server, and data relating to search conditions input by a user through an external input device and network address data selected and input by the user through the external input device to the electronic document search server An electronic device having a data transmission function for transmitting, a data receiving function for receiving search result data and electronic document data transmitted from the electronic document search server, and a data external output function for outputting the received data to an external output device. Document search client and
An electronic document retrieval system connected by a computer network. 4. The electronic document search system according to claim 3, wherein the computer network is the Internet, and the electronic document search server has a WWW server function. 5. The electronic document search system according to claim 3, wherein the electronic document to be searched is an HTML document. 6. The electronic document search system according to claim 3, wherein the electronic document search client has a WWW browser function. 7. A computer-readable storage medium recorded as a program for causing a computer to execute the glossary database creation method according to claim 1 and the electronic document search method according to claim 2.