JP2002024227A - System and method for generating radio web page - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a system and a method which enable a user to analyze a document to create a new document generally by decomposing the document into a hierarchical structure. SOLUTION: The system and method for radio page generation are prepared which enable the user to specify the format of an HTML page sent from a radio device. This system can automatically handle dynamic Web pages as well as static HTML Web pages. The system may includes a graphical user interface(GUI) which enables the user to interact with the system. Further, the system may includes a robustifier which automatically processes a dynamic Web page to generate an XSL style sheet making it possible to extract contents from the dynamic Web page.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates generally to systems and methods that allow a user to analyze a document in order to decompose the document into a hierarchical structure and create a new document, and more particularly, to an original document. 1 corresponding to the information source of
To generate one or more wireless web pages,
Users can use Hypertext Markup Language (HTM)
L) Web pages, XML documents, ICE documents (content syndication forms), or systems and methods that allow analysis of information sources such as Reuters.

[0002]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION There is an increasing need to be able to decompose a document or web page into its constituent parts. In particular, for web pages written in HTML or some other format, the ability to view the web page and divide the web page into one or more hierarchically related elements known as atomics. is necessary. Atomics are details or small parts of a web page. Atomics may be clustered into groups, and each group may then be clustered into larger groups. For example, each top article of a web page may be atomic, while all articles may be treated as one group.

[0003] The identification of atomics in a web page and in the atomic hierarchy is an important task. For example, the system may decompose the web page into a hierarchical atomic and then use the hierarchical atomic to reconstruct the web page for one or more different users, in which case , Each user may request a slightly different portion of the web page, or each user is using a device that can only accommodate certain fragments of the web page due to memory or screen size limitations Maybe. The disassembled web page may also be used for various other purposes.

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Such a common practice is that a company wants to distribute the contents of its web page to many wireless devices, such as mobile phones, Palm devices, pagers. For web pages, a group of people must return to the content database and re-create each new page for each different type of wireless device, which is a slow and time-consuming process. In addition, if the original web page changes, each new page created by that group of people must be re-created. Thus, a single user, such as a web page producer, can more easily atomically decompose sources of information, such as HTML web pages, XML documents, ICE documents (content syndication forms), and Reuters distribution, to create atomics It is necessary to provide a system that can automatically generate a newly formatted wireless page for one or more different wireless devices by associating and assigning properties to each other, It is precisely this purpose that the present invention contemplates.

[0005] Further, web pages are often dynamic in that the content of the web page can be constantly changed or updated. For example, web pages containing information about news, transaction information, shopping information, etc., must be continuously updated to reflect changes. When a web page is dynamic, the process of trying to create a new page with a particular format from the original web page becomes more difficult. For example, if the original news article web page has two top articles, and the designer creates a new page, the new page will change as soon as the content of the article changes or the number of the top article changes It's stale, because the page is no longer accurate or up to date. That is, the task of manually creating a new page based on a dynamic web page is enormously difficult and very time-consuming because the new page quickly becomes stale. That is, a system for automatically or semi-automatically generating a new page based on the dynamic web page is prepared so that the designer does not need to recreate a new page without interruption when the content of the dynamic web page changes. It is necessary that the present invention also contemplates exactly this purpose.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION A system and method for generating a wireless web page according to the present invention is provided, wherein information such as an HTML web page, an XML document, an ICE document (content syndication format), or a Reuters is provided. The source may be automatically broken down into its components in a hierarchical format, so that new pages that differ in format or content may be automatically generated based on the original source. The present invention is directed to one or more wireless devices, where each wireless device has a different memory and screen size, which requires generating a series of pages (referred to as cards) in a different format for each wireless device. To H
It is especially useful in situations where you want to repurpose TML web pages. The present invention is also particularly useful for generating one or more different wireless pages from a dynamic web page for one or more different wireless devices having different screen sizes as described in more detail below.

[0007] The wireless page generation system according to the present invention comprises:
It may be used by producers of websites wishing to repurpose the content of a web page to one or more different wireless devices, in which case the screen size of each different wireless device may be different Well, thereby, the format of each wireless web page should be slightly different. With the system according to the invention,
The producer may repurpose the web page for a plurality of different wireless devices without assistance and generate the wireless page automatically by a wireless page distribution system.

[0008] A system and method for generating wireless web pages according to the present invention, known in the NoMad® Wireless Toolkit, may include a graphic user interface (GUI) portion. The system allows web page producers using the wireless toolkit to specify how website content should be displayed to wireless devices, and then to target web page specifications and wireless for smart harvesting and navigation systems. Allows direct communication with how to generate the page. The system also allows producers to preview their website content on one or more wireless pages that emulate how the website content will be displayed on wireless devices. enable.

In a preferred embodiment, the system allows a producer (also referred to herein as a user) to quickly process a web page to generate a hierarchical list of the atomics contained in the page, and from the original web page To generate the resulting page with some or all of the atomics of the For example,
If the page is to be sent to a wireless device with limited memory or screen size, the web page producer will typically reformat the web page with a more limited memory or screen size for display on that device. Must be transformed. The producer also
The web page may need to be reformatted for a number of wireless devices, where each wireless device has a different screen size, so that the pages generated for each wireless device are unique. However, in the system according to the present invention, the producer automatically generates wireless pages and forms each wireless page for each wireless device so that wireless pages for dynamic websites can also be automatically generated. I can do it.

That is, in accordance with the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for processing an information source, the apparatus searching for the information source and one or more of the information sources, each element including a fragment of the content in the information source. Extract more elements. The apparatus also generates a data structure representing a hierarchical structure of the elements in the information source and processes the data structure to retrieve a predetermined element from the information source. When extracting an element from an information source, the apparatus includes a page browsing part for browsing a page from which the element is extracted, a page navigator part for browsing a hierarchical list of elements extracted from the page, and an element from the page. A user that pulls an element from the page browsing part to the page navigator part to extract the element, and an element characteristic part that browses the characteristics of the elements in the list of the page navigator part. Navigator part, and
The element properties portion allows a user to quickly extract elements from a page by simultaneously viewing the page and a hierarchical list of elements.

[0011] In generating the data structure, the apparatus converts the information source into a first hierarchical structure containing the content and the hierarchical structure, and then the elements are located even if the information source changes. As such, determine a generalized path to the element at the source. More specifically, the first hierarchical structure is:
Comprising one or more nodes, each containing an element, a particular element being located at a first node of the hierarchical structure;
The generalized path determinator compares the first node containing the data with each of the other nodes in the hierarchical structure to identify the unique node identifier. The generalized path determinator also identifies a turning point node associated with the first node if the unique identifier is not found during the comparison, wherein the turning point node uniquely identifies the first node. This is a node having a hierarchical structure in which the descendant axis is designated as a turning point node when there is no descendant of the node that is identified and matches the first node.

According to another aspect of the invention, a page browsing portion for browsing a page from which an atomic or atomic group is extracted, and a page navigator portion for browsing a hierarchical list of the atomics extracted from the page. Extracting an atomic from a page, a user who pulls an atomic from a page browsing part to a page navigator part, and an atomic property part which browses atomic properties of a list of the page navigator part.
A graphical user interface is provided for extracting one or more atomics from a TML web page. Page browsing part, page navigator part,
And the element property portion allows a user to quickly extract an atomic from a page by simultaneously browsing the page and the hierarchical list of atomics.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a graphic user interface for extracting one or more atomics from an HTML web page, wherein the graphic user interface has the atomics extracted. Navigating the page by browsing the page and browsing the hierarchical list of atomics extracted from the page, the user pulls the atomic from the page viewer to the page navigator, extracts the atomic from the page, Pulls an atomic property generator that extracts properties from the selected atomics, thereby browsing the page where the user can simultaneously view the hierarchical list of atomics and the selected atomic properties.

In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, rerouting a web page for one or more wireless devices having different screen formats by routing to each piece of web page content. A web page processing method is prepared. The method generates a first hierarchical structure including a structure of the web page and a content of the web page based on the web page. The method then generates, from the first hierarchical structure, a second hierarchical structure of the web page comprising a structure of the web page indicating a path to the content.
The method then generates a relative path to the content of the web page, which is inserted into the second hierarchical structure, wherein the content search using the path to the content even if the web page changes is performed by the content search. The second hierarchically structured path is strengthened so that

[0015]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention is particularly applicable to the decomposition of web pages to generate one or more new wireless pages for one or more different wireless devices, and in this context the book The invention is described below. However, the systems and methods according to the present invention may be used to generate new pages, including, but not limited to, XML documents, ICE documents (content syndication forms), Reuters distributions, or any other type of information distribution. It will be appreciated that applications are more useful for other types of sources, such as those that can decompose the source into one or more components. To better understand the present invention, a wireless page distribution system that can be used with the wireless web page generator according to the present invention is briefly described below.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a wireless page distribution system 10 that may be used with the wireless page generation system according to the present invention. This system is briefly described herein. A more detailed description may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 503,797, filed Feb. 14, 2000, filed on Feb. 14, 2000, which is hereby incorporated by reference. Can be seen in the issue. The system 10 may include one or more content providers or sources 11, such as companies that want to be able to deliver web pages from a website to one or more different wireless devices, in which case:
Due to the size of the wireless device screen, the wireless device memory, or the communication link between the wireless device and the website, each wireless device requires a web page to be formatted in a specific manner. You may.

The system also includes a gateway 12, a web server 13, a wireless communication system 14 with wireless devices,
And a wireless web page delivery portion 15. The gateway intercepts an incoming HTTP request from the wireless device and intercepts the web server 13 and the wireless page delivery portion 15
You can send a request to Wireless page distribution part 1
5 retrieves the actual requested HTML page, reformats the page into one or more cards and decks for a particular wireless device, and reformats the wireless device using web server 13 and gateway 12. Formatted cards and decks may be sent.

To perform HTML page reformatting and other functions, the wireless page delivery portion 15 includes an electrical device connection handler 16, a content connection handler 17, an XML engine 18, a placement engine 19, and a rule database 2.
0 and an XSL ruleset database 21. Briefly, the system uses the incoming H
Receives a TML page request, retrieves a web page,
Reformats the TML page into XHTML, generates an RML document from the XHTML document, and replaces elements from the RML document with one.
One or more cards and decks may be formatted to form a presentation shoe that is delivered to the wireless device. Figure 1 shows the interaction of each part of the wireless page distribution system
, And is further described in the above-mentioned patent application, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein. Therefore, further detailed description of the operation of the wireless page distribution system will be omitted. Here, the wireless web page generation system according to the present invention will be described below.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a web page generation system 22 according to the present invention. In general, a web page generation system will allow a producer or company with a web page to adjust the appearance of one or more web pages when the web page is downloaded to a wireless device, as described in more detail below. Enable. Web page generation system 22 may include a rear end portion 23 and a front end portion 24. The front end portion may also be called a graphic user interface (GUI) tool. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the trailing end portion includes one or more compiled JAVAs that perform the trailing end functions, as described in more detail below.
A (R) program / module, wherein the front end includes one or more visual basic modules / programs that perform the functions of the front end (GUI tool), as described in more detail below. It may be. The GUI tool and the back end may be connected to each other using an API, as is well known.

More specifically, the trailing end 23 may further include the web page distribution section 15, the RML builder module 25, the XSL generator module 26, and the style sheet database 27 shown in FIG.
The function of each module is now described, and further details for each module are given below. As described above, the web page delivery portion 15 may generate XHMTL. The RML builder module 25 generates an RML document based on the generated rule set and converts the RML document into an RML document, as described in further detail in the above-referenced patent application incorporated by reference herein. XSL based on
The RML document may be output into an XSL generator 26 that generates a style sheet. The generated style sheet can be stored in the database 27. One or more cards may be automatically generated from the web page using the XSL stylesheet so that the web page is downloaded and displayed on the wireless device.

The GUI tool 24 may further include a ruleset construction toolset 28, a ruleset database 29, a project construction toolset 30, and a wireless website project database 31. Graphic User Interface (GU
I) The tool allows the user to interact with the application. Especially if you use the GUI tool,
Users are required to submit a wireless website project
Content selection, organization, and placement can be performed, including the step of forming one or more cards containing the content of the website. In a preferred embodiment, the GU
I has the look and feel of a standard MS Windows application and is compliant with the MS Windows application standard.

A ruleset construction toolset 28 may allow a user to create and define rulesets. The ruleset 15 describes how the wireless page delivery system 15 should translate the content and services of the desktop-centric web page into one or more cards that are going to the wireless device, such as new formatting for the card.
And what content is to be placed on which card.
More specifically, a ruleset may also define which URLs use a particular ruleset. The ruleset may also include an XSL stylesheet that specifies how to convert the web page into one or more wireless pages. With the ruleset construction toolset, the user can: 1. Create, open, and remember rulesets. 2. Select a desktop-centric web page that is the basis for the ruleset. 3. Create a rule set (select and group content and services for web pages for wireless distribution). 4. Integrate specialized wireless functions into the ruleset. 5. Browse the "wireless operation structure" of the ruleset in graphic form. 6. Using a wireless device emulator or an internet enabled wireless device, deploy the rule set on a trial basis.

The ruleset construction toolset 28 may receive XHTML documents representing web pages from the web distribution portion 15 and generate one or more rulesets that may be stored in an XHTML-based database 29. One or more rule sets determine what an HTML web page looks like on a wireless device when the wireless web page is converted to a web page, as described in further detail below. Database 29
May be sent to the RML builder 25, which generates an RML document, and also to the project construction toolset 30, which generates a wireless website project for incoming web pages, as described below. Good. Finished projects are stored in the database 31
Is stored.

In operation, a producer may interact with a GUI tool to generate a wireless website project that includes information about the appearance of an HTML web page on one or more wireless devices. When a producer or user selects a web page, the wireless distribution portion 15 can search the web page and generate an XHMTL document corresponding to the web page. The user extracts or automatically extracts one or more elements from the web page using the ruleset construction toolset, as described below with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4. be able to. From the extracted elements, hereinafter referred to as atomic, the user may generate a wireless page appearance and review the wireless page. When the user is satisfied with the wireless page, the wireless page delivery system 15 (see FIG. 1), when it receives the request for the web page, sends the appropriate one for the wireless device based on the generated ruleset and style sheet. One or more rule sets that capture information about the appearance of the wireless page are generated to automatically generate one or more cards. That is, once a user forms a rule set and a style sheet, the wireless page distribution system automatically generates a wireless page according to the style sheet.

Using the generation ruleset, the RML builder module 25 and the XSL generator module 26 may generate the RML document, and then the ruleset and the requirements of the producer embodied in the RML document. XSL stylesheets that reflect
Also, using the ruleset to generate project information that can be combined with an XSL stylesheet, and using a wireless webpage distribution system to generate a wireless website project that can be subsequently deployed using a wireless webpage distribution system as shown in FIG. Is also good. Using the wireless page generation system, a user may specify the format of the web page on the wireless device.

The ruleset construction toolset 28 can further include a page viewer module, described with reference to FIGS. 4a-4c, and a wireless operation viewer module, described below with reference to FIG. . The project construction toolset 30 includes a project manager module described below with reference to FIGS. 6 and 7, a URL formation manager module described below with reference to FIG. 8, and FIGS. 9A and 9B. It may further comprise a wireless configuration manager module described below, a deployment manager module described below with reference to FIG. 10, and an emulator module described below with reference to FIGS. 32a and 32b. here,
Each of these modules will be described in more detail.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a portion of a web page 40 that is broken down into one or more atomics and atomic groups according to the present invention, and in particular, an example of an HTML web page 40 of an online stockbroker. FIG. In the drawing, the innermost portion surrounded by a dotted line indicates atomic, and the outer portion surrounded by the dotted line forms an atomic group. Atomics include words, stock quotes, stock names, headlines, paragraphs, links, images,
And basic building blocks of the web page, such as other basic elements of the page that form the most basic element of the web page. The system may automatically identify web page atomics based on XHTML documents. Groups are formed as a user-defined atomic set that can be nested within a hierarchical organization. These logical hierarchical sets form the operating experience for users and are key to wireless website construction.

For example, at the top of page 40 is a quote lookup format 41. Market lookup format 4
1 has three atomics: a "quote" title portion 41a, an input box 41b, and a "go (G
o) "Submit" button 41c. Further, the market graph 42a, the table 42b, and the Pool. com advertisement 42c
Are each related atomic and are grouped together to form a group 42. Further, each element of the market graph 42a may also be atomic, so that "NASDAQ" is atomic, "275.27" is atomic, the down arrow is atomic, Then, “−5.
48 is also atomic

Finally, The Street. The com logo 43a and the news articles 43b and 43c are each related atomic and are grouped as a group 43. All of the groups 41, 42, and 43 constitute the root group 40. These groups make up the relevant hierarchy for this part of the E-TRADE website. Therefore, any web page can be broken down into atomic and atomic groups,
Thereby, atomic and atomic group,
It can be reconstructed into a new web page with a different atomic subset or a different format. Here, the page viewer module of the rule set construction tool set will be described in more detail.

There may be a variety of different uses for breaking down a source, such as a web page, into its atomic form. In a preferred embodiment, the decomposition of the web page into atomics allows the web page to be repurposed for display on one or more different wireless devices with different screen sizes. In particular, web pages have already been broken down into individual atomics, so that those atomics can be automatically or manually targeted to one or more different wireless devices, such that wireless pages can be generated. It is possible to allocate more wireless pages.

FIGS. 4a to 4c show an integrated desktop tool for the GUI tools in the system shown in FIG.
FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user interface 50. In the illustrated example, the user interface is designed to allow the user to simultaneously view all of the tools in the ruleset construction toolset, as shown. In particular, the user interface 50 may include a page viewer portion 52, a page navigator portion 54, an atomic feature portion 56, and one or more tabs 58 for changing the item being viewed in the page viewer portion 52. . In the illustrated example, the tabs are an HTML tab 60 where the user can view the HTML code, a configuration tab 62 where the user can view the graphic page shown in FIG. 3, and a source tab 64 where the user can view the page source.
May be provided.

The page viewer 52 is a main work environment for constructing a rule set. A desktop-centric web page that the user wants to create for wireless distribution is displayed. The user selects elements (atomic or atomic group) from the target web page with the mouse, and then sets properties for each element. The page viewer allows the user to browse the page where the atomics are being extracted or created using the extracted atomics in different item viewing modes controlled by the tabs. FIG. 4 shows an auction page for eBay. here,
Atomic extraction processing will be briefly described.

To extract atomics from web pages, which may be HTML, Microsoft®
A modified HTML editor such as DHTML may be used. A typical HTML editor can display HTML as it would normally be created, but it does not allow click-throughs to links, nor does it allow a particular HTML subtree to be selected. For example, if a text fragment is selected, the general HTML
The editor tells the user which node of the HTML tree contains all the selected text. But,
The modified HTML editor according to the present invention has been modified to return an HTML node with the selected content based on a user click. Next, the atomic extractor:
Dig into the underlying tree node structure and determine the path to the selected element by iterating through the valid parents. Because there are some checks to add to this mix). The path to the selected content represented by the atomic is the absolute path to the atomic and will be used later to describe the location of the specific content.

The page navigator 54 is very similar to the construction view of the page viewer and can initiate all of the functionality of the construction viewer. But the page
The navigator 54 displays the selected page elements in a tree structure rather than a graphic format. The tree structure hierarchically represents how the elements are organized into groups or atomically. Accordingly, the page navigator portion 54 shows the hierarchical structure of the page. In particular, pages are represented as groups or atomics arranged in a hierarchical relationship as shown. The hierarchical relationship between atomic and atomic groups may be manually created by the user by pulling elements from the page shown in page viewer portion 52 and dropping them into navigator portion 54. In addition, the system can automatically extract atomics and groups from web pages, as described above. The user may then place an atomic or group in the navigator portion 54 to accurately reflect the page.

When the atomic of the navigator part 54 is selected, the atomic property is changed to the atomic property part 5.
6 may be displayed. The atomic properties portion 56 allows a user to view and form properties for each element of the wireless website. The characteristics may represent a particular attribute of each element (eg, the characteristics may define which class of wireless device may display the element). In the example shown, the properties of an atomic are its name,
It may include classes, RML paths, HTML paths, their tags, atomic samples, and any other information.
In accordance with the present invention, the GUI tool interface allows a user to simultaneously view all of the above portions, as shown in FIG. It is not necessary to switch between screens or applications to see all of the necessary information.

FIG. 4b shows an HTML viewer 60 in which a graphic page generated based on the HTML code is shown. FIG. 4c shows the source viewer 64 in which the actual HTML code that creates the graphic page is shown. Here, the wireless operation viewer module according to the present invention, which is a part of the GUI tool, will be described in further detail.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of the wireless operation viewer module 70 according to the present invention in the system shown in FIG. The wireless operation viewer 70 allows the user to graphically view the wireless operation structure of one or more cards generated based on the ruleset created using the ruleset construction toolset, as described above. Can be. In particular, due to the screen limitations of most wireless devices, typically one web page is delivered to the wireless device in a series of presentation decks. These decks include one or more cards, each containing web page content appropriately formatted for each wireless device screen. Thus, the wireless navigation viewer module presents these decks to the user in a graphical format so that the user can confirm that the web page has been split into cards in an appropriate manner. That is, the user may review the results of the ruleset generated using the ruleset construction toolset.

In the example shown in FIG. 5, the web page contains, according to the user's rule set, three other cards 74, 7 each containing bid statistics, seller information, and a description of the item.
6, and 78 are broken down into a first card 72 containing auction items linked to 78. Bid statistics card 74
May have a bid card 79 and a bid method card 80 linked to the bid card. The explanation card 78 is an image card 82 showing an image of an item linked to the explanation card.
Can have That is, for a user having a wireless device, the user may operate via a card as shown in FIG. That is, the user of the system can ensure that the cards are generated in a logical manner, so that operation through the cards is logical. If the user notices a problem with the operation, they can return to the page viewer portion 50 and redo the ruleset to post-process the problem. Here, the project construction toolkit according to the present invention will be described in more detail.

The project building toolset 30 allows a user to combine one or more rulesets into a wireless website project (WWP). With the project building toolset, users can: 1. WWP by adding and removing rule sets
(See FIG. 7). 2. Create and maintain a WWP URL definition table (showing how to apply the ruleset to various web pages) (see FIG. 8). 3. Integrate specialized wireless functionality with WWP (see FIGS. 9A and 9B). 4. Deploy WWP on a trial basis using a wireless device emulator or internet enabled wireless device. 5. Relocate the WWP from the test environment to the production environment (see FIG. 10).

As described above, the project construction toolset further includes a project manager module,
A URL formation manager module, a wireless configuration manager module, a location manager module, and
Includes emulator module. Here, each of these modules will be described. FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user interface 90 for a project manager according to the present invention. The project manager allows the user to maintain a set of rule sets that make up the WWP. Using the project manager, the user can modify the WWP by adding or removing previously created rulesets, as described below with reference to FIG. As shown in FIG. 6, a list 92 of one or more different rule sets for a particular project is shown. For each rule set, the user who created the rule set, the date of the last update, the status (arranged or changed), and the URL rule are listed. Further, the user interface 90 allows the user to, for example, add a rule set, place a rule set,
It may include one or more buttons 94 that can form an RL, exit project management, or cancel previous commands. Here, an example of the ruleset addition user interface will be described. Examples of a rule set and a wireless page generated based on the rule set and the XSL style sheet will be described below with reference to FIGS. 22 to 25B.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of a ruleset addition viewer user interface 100 according to the present invention. The Add Ruleset Viewer user interface allows a user to add rulesets previously created using the ruleset construction toolset to a particular project. As shown in FIG.
The user may select one or more existing rule sets (StartPage.rs, Categ in this example).
ories. rs, ItemList. rs and I
temDescription. rs) and add them to the project. In the illustrated example, the user forms an item that is used to present a description of the card, deck, and item to the user.
Description. The rs rule set has been selected. Here, the URL formation manager according to the present invention will be described below.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing an example of the URL formation manager user interface 110 according to the present invention. The URL formation manager allows a user to maintain a URL definition table for a project. U
The RL definition table allows the wireless page distribution system 15 shown in FIG. 2 to select an appropriate rule set for each URL request. In particular, rulesets often apply to multiple URLs, so this module allows the user to define how URLs are mapped to rulesets. For example, as shown in FIG. rs has been selected, and the URL formation manager enumerates one or more tokens 112 that are used to check whether a particular rule set applies to a particular URL. In addition, whether a particular token needs to be adapted to use the ruleset ("necessary"),
L token is not applicable ("not relevant"), or
For each token that indicates whether the token cannot exist in the URL for the ruleset ("unnecessary"),
The circle 114 may be filled. In the example shown, the URL
Needs to have the following tokens to invoke the ruleset. That is, eBay, com, aw-c
gi and eBayISAPI. dll? ViewI
tem & Item. Therefore, for example, "http
p: // www. e1Bay. com. . . U
In the RL, a rule set is not called because eBay is not included. Here, the wireless configuration manager according to the present invention will be described below.

FIGS. 9A and 9B show examples of user interfaces 120 and 122 for a wireless configuration manager according to the present invention. The wireless configuration manager is used to provide certain specialized wireless features not available from desktop-centric website content. In particular,
The wireless configuration manager allows the user to integrate these functions into a wireless website. For example, a user may include a professional messaging function in a WWP or revenue form that is briefly described below as an example of a wireless form that may be added.

FIGS. 9A and 9B show an example of a case where an electronic profit form is included in a wireless page. In FIG. 9A, the wireless configuration manager allows the user to add an e-commerce configuration (including secure points of receipt and total payment),
Or, promotion features (including wireless advertising, coupon distribution, and funding) can be added. In FIG. 9B,
User interface 12 for adding a wireless advertisement
2 is shown in more detail. The user can, for example, specify an advertising partner and the URL of that partner, along with information about how often to display advertisements to wireless device users. As shown, one or more wireless devices can be selected for the advertisement, and each different wireless device can have a different level of advertisement. For example, some wireless devices such as "Internet Phone" and "Handheld" may be selected and repeat the advertisement on every deck presented to the user, as opposed to a WAP phone where the advertisement is displayed once per session. be able to.
Thus, the user can use the wireless configuration manager to customize the configuration associated with the wireless page. Here, the arrangement manager will be described in more detail.

FIG. 10 shows a configuration manager according to the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user interface 130. The configuration manager allows the user to control the configuration of the WWP. For example, a user may use a deployment manager to create a WWP in either a test environment or a production environment.
Can be arranged. The deployment manager also includes a deployment version control that allows the user to revert to a previous version if needed. FIG. 10 shows “whatev
er. 5 shows an example of a deployment manager user interface showing a version for a project called "nmd". Here, the rear end of the wireless page generation system according to the present invention will be described in more detail.

As described above, the rear end has an R as shown in FIG.
An ML builder 25, an XSL generator 26, and a style sheet database 27 are provided. Now, each of these back-end modules will be described in more detail. The RML builder 25 uses an agonostic RML based on a ruleset generated by the GUI.
Store and update documents. These documents include user-specified project data collected through a GUI. The data is used as input to the placement engine as well as user specified groups and atomics.
Content that reflects the structure of the ML document Contains user-defined attributes and additional rules for hierarchically handling agnostic RML document group data. Here, the web page (dynamic in this example) is converted to RML code, then converted to enhanced agnostic RML code, and finally to an XSL stylesheet that extracts the desired content from the dynamic web page An example of the processing performed will be described.

FIG. 11 shows an example of a dynamic web page in which the contents of two samples 131 and 132 of the web page change. The web page is the first sample 131
To a second sample 132, which makes it more difficult to accurately extract the content, as described below, and may be dynamic. The first sample 131 is a group 131
And a plurality of atomics 134 in the group. In particular, an atomic can be "yin" and "yang". As shown, the second sample 132 can also have a group 133 and an atomic 134. However, in the second sample, group 13
The number of atomics in 3 is "Yin", "Yang", and
Only one has been added to be able to become atomic of the dragon. The number of atomics in the other part of the web page has also increased by one. For example, the first sample may be a web page at a first predetermined time and when the content changes, the second sample may be the same web page at a second predetermined time. As described above, when the web page changes in the normal system, as shown in FIG. 11, the people who are generating the wireless web page need to start over all of the wireless web page.
However, according to the present invention, appropriate contents can be extracted from a web page regardless of whether the web page resembles the first sample 31 or the second sample 132. A web page is structurally represented by its HTML tree as shown in FIG. FIG.
5 shows an example of an HTML tree corresponding to one web page sample. In particular, although the hierarchical structure of each sample of the web page is shown, the differences between the two samples are clear. More specifically, the upper part of the HTML tree is the same because the content and structure of the web page are the same. In the first example HTML tree, the table structure is the parent of the TR group node 133 that is the parent of the two TD nodes 134 that contain the atomic “Yin” and “Yang”. In contrast, the HTML tree of the second sample has the same table / parent node and the same TR group node 133 but three TDs containing three atomic "Yin", "Yang", and "Dragon". There are nodes. Here, an example of the RML code generated on the two samples of the web page will be described.

FIG. 13 shows a relational markup language (RML) generated based on the web page sample of FIG.
An example of the code 135 is shown. In particular, the RML code may be referred to as legitimate RML because the code contains content in contrast to Agnostic RML (ARML), which contains only questions about the structure of the web page but does not contain legitimate RML. Has the same relationship hierarchy as. RML code in the current paradigm is typically constructed by applying an XSL stylesheet to an HTML page to convert HTML to RML format through the selection of specific pieces of content to be targeted. As shown, the RML code for each sample is different because the second sample contains additional atomics as described above. A group tag is generated for each group 133, and an atomic tag is generated for each atomic 134. That is, RML captures the targeted content of a web page and includes it in a hierarchical structure of atomic or atomic groups.

FIG. 14 shows an example of the raw agnostic RML code (ARML) 136 for each sample. In particular, these are the ARM
L, and each atomic contains a fully specified path.
Next, the ARML code is pre-processed and then enhanced and generalized as described below with reference to FIGS. A sample of the enhanced ARML code 137 for each sample of the web page is shown in FIG. Therefore, even if the web page is dynamic and changes (the first sample 131 and the second sample 13 shown in FIG. 11).
2), so that the XSL stylesheet shown in FIG. 17 extracts the correct content from the web page,
The route to the target content is strengthened. In this example,
Even if there are two or three pieces of content, all of the contents of the table should be extracted. FIG. 16 shows a generalized ARML code according to the present invention. FIG.
XSL that correctly processes both web page samples according to the invention, generated based on ARML code 6
An example of the style sheet 139 is shown. Here, two embodiments of the XSL generator 26 will be described in more detail.

FIG. 18A and FIG. 18B show the X according to the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating further details of two embodiments of the SL generator 26. In particular, the XSL generator
Receive Agnostic RML from RML builder,
Use it to build XSL stylesheets. XSL
Style sheets are used by wireless page distribution systems to automatically generate one or more cards and decks based on HTML web pages. The XSL engine 15 (also known as Catalyst®) of the wireless page distribution system, when later converting the XHTML to legitimate RML for reformatting the web page into a wireless page for the wireless device, Refer to the style sheet. According to one embodiment of the present invention, X
The SL generator can automatically create a style sheet based on user input, as described above. In a preferred embodiment, the XSL generator is RM
Automatically parse through XPATH in L documents, even if the original web page changes, XSL
It may further include an XPATH robustifier, described below, which attempts to generalize the path so that the style sheet can still extract the appropriate atomics or groups. For example, if a website generally has its top article in a table with a cell for each article, and the website adds more top articles in the table, XPATH Robustifier will change the original formatting style, Thus, even if there is an extra top article, the formatting style still searches for the correct content, as described in more detail below. That is, even dynamic web pages that change content may be automatically processed in accordance with the present invention to correctly generate one or more wireless pages or cards.

In one embodiment, shown in FIG. 18A, which is a preferred embodiment, XSL generator 26 includes
It may comprise one or more modules, which may be software applications executed by the CPU on the server. XSL generator 26
Is the XPATH preprocessor module 140, XP
ATH robustifier module 142 and X
An SL writing module 144 may be included. FIG. 18B
In the embodiment shown in FIG.
42 has been removed. Without the XPATH robustifier, the system would generate an XSL stylesheet that would extract the appropriate information from the website, but if the website was dynamic, it might not be able to extract the correct information. Using the XPATH robustifier according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention, dynamic web pages can also be properly handled. This is because the XPATH robustifier attempts to generalize the stylesheet XPATH so that the stylesheet is not confused by changes in the web page, as described in more detail below. Here, each module of the XSL generator 26 will be described in more detail.

[0052] The role of the XPATH preprocessor 140 is to form a relative path to selected content in the RML. The XHTML tree uses an absolute path to the selected content that records any nodes between the root node and the selected content. But,
Relative path (need to record less than all nodes from root node to selected content)
The use of style sheets is quite generalized.
Further, the relative path may be used by the XPATH robustifier for the generalization method described below with reference to FIGS.

More specifically, to form a relative path, the XPATH preprocessor first determines a group node for the selected content. The group node is the lowest parent node that links to all of the grouped and selected content. Next, the preprocessor:
Form a path between the group node and its descendants that are relative paths. FIG. 19 is a diagram showing three examples for identifying a group node according to the present invention. As shown
XHTM with absolute path to selected content 152 (shown shaded), with group node 156 and RML tree 154 containing selected content 152
An L-tree 150 is shown. In the first example, the selected content 152 has absolute paths "ABDG" and "ABDH" in the XHTML tree, and the relative path is from each of the selected contents (atomic G and A) from the group node "ABD". A group node "ABD", which is the parent of both fragments of the selected content, is arranged so that it is up to atomic H). In the second example, the selected content E and I have the absolute paths "ABDI" and "ABE" so that the group node containing the parent of the selected content is "AB And RML
Tree 154 contains a group node and two selected contents (atomic DI and atomic E). Similarly, in the third example, the selected contents E and J have absolute paths “ABE” and “ACFJ”, and as shown, the group node including the parent of the selected contents is “A”. And the RML tree 154 includes a group node and two selected contents (atomic BE and atomic CFJ). That is, the XPATH preprocessor seeks to simplify the path to the selected content by determining the lowest group node of the tree that is the parent of the selected content.

The XSL writing module 144 creates an XSL stylesheet from the agnostic RML.
The XSL writing module 144 does this by creating a template for each node of the tree (when generalized, some nodes may point to several different content fragments of the tree). The element handler writes code for each template.
If the node contains content, the element handler needs to perform a user-defined way of handling the content in a particular way.
For example, image display may be handled in several ways. That is, the image is displayed on the enabled device,
Otherwise, the image is displayed as ALT-tag text, the image is displayed on the enabled device, no ALT-tag is used on other devices, or the image is displayed on all devices as ALT-tag. -Displayed as tag text.

If the user wants to display an image as ALT-tag text on all devices, the element handler
Create the code to make that decision in XSL. These choices are considered to be auxiliary (ie, non-attribute) preferences. Here, a generalization method executed by the XPATH robustifier will be described. FIG. 20 is a flowchart illustrating the generalization method 160 according to the present invention. The generalization method is one example of a technique according to the invention for generalizing the path to a selected content. Another technique is embodied in a robustifier, as described below. Both techniques may or may not be used with the wireless page generation system. Both techniques may be used to help the wireless page generation system handle dynamic web pages with potentially changing content. Generalization is the process of applying the content selection and formatting of one element to other similar elements. Generalization takes into account that the element to be generalized can occur any number of times in an XHTML page. To take this into account, generalization forces the unit that generates the XSL stylesheet (referred to as the XSL generator) to apply a template to similar elements in order to process them in the same way. For more information, ARML
The XSL stylesheet is then created using ARML, and the XSL stylesheet is further applied to the XHTML page to create the RML.

For this document, ARML has a path to query XHTML for content, and RML contains the actual content accessed during the query. For the purposes of this disclosure, the term “pre-processing” or “preprocessor” refers to A
Take the absolute paths stored in the RML leaves and AR them
A software module that is relativized based on the group and atomic hierarchy in the ML. The generalization process uses XPath to modify the actual path so that the actual path can fit more than one node at a time (helping to handle the changing number of similar items on a page). It is a complicated process.

The generalization method 160 may involve a combination of user input and automatic calculations. In this method, at step 162, the user selects an example of a type of group or atomic (groups and atomics are not described) whose number may change dynamically, and then selects another similar atomic or group. Do or remove.
Also, the amount of XHTML page content to be generalized can be adjusted to automatically select and create other atomics or groups. For example, the user may remove some special elements from the newly selected content, or XHT at step 164 to increase or decrease the content selection.
You may choose to move the ML tree further up or down. The user views the selection and approves the change or provides further input. Next, a set of generalized atomics or groups is formed from the final quantities of the selected content. The method uses RML
Associated with the nodes, the RML nodes are also based on tree nodes with nodes corresponding to the XHTML tree. Every XHTML node is the parent of a subtree (the set of all descendant nodes of a parent node). The user
Move the XHTML tree up and down in step 164 using the navigation button to create a wider or narrower XHT
Select the ML subtree to represent the RML node. XHTML nodes above the tree are the parents of the larger subtree and have more content. At step 166, it is determined whether the user has selected more content, and if more content has been generalized, the method loops back to step 162. If there is no more generalized content, a general XPATH expression for generalization is calculated in step 168. Then the method is complete.

FIG. 21 is a diagram showing an example of the generalization method according to the present invention. In particular, assume that the user has selected an atomic in the XHTML tree that represents a "D" node (shown shaded) (see section I of the figure). This "D" node has a "C" tag as its parent in the XHTML structure. By pressing the "up arrow" button, the user can move up the atomic path one level to the "C" tag. This converts the atomic into a group where everything below the “C” tag is a child of the atomic (Section II).
Please refer to). The "C" tag has several "D" under it
If there are tags, all “D” tags will be converted atomically and marked as “generalized”. In accordance with the present invention, the method can handle changes in the number of children (see Section III), since the path is directed to "C" so that any number of atomic "D" s below "C" are searched. Please see). For example, if "C" represents the top stories of a news web page and "D" represents each top story, it will still be searched for even if more top stories are added to the website. Furthermore, the generalized node "C"
May ignore newly inserted non-target children (see section IV). A similar method can be used to handle group generalization. Here, the robustifier will be described in more detail.

FIG. 22 is a block diagram showing further details of the XPATH robustifier 142 according to the present invention. In general, robustifiers generalize paths through a hierarchical structure, so that content can still be located in the hierarchical structure during a search, even if the underlying hierarchical structure or the contents within the hierarchical structure have changed. . HTML or X
In the context of generating XSL code for interrogation in an ML structure, a robustifier may be referred to as an XPATH robustifier. That is, the robustifier is still valid even after a new HTML or XML node has been inserted into the structure being queried.
Create a route to the selected content. This is XPa
This is achieved by making the th node selection as non-specific as possible. Robustifiers are: XHT
When compared to all similar nodes in the ML subtree or the entire XHTML structure, it retrieves information specific to the selected XHTML node. By adapting nodes according to this kind of information, a less specific path is created for the same unique set of content.

FIG. 23 is a diagram showing an example of the path to the contents stored in the dynamic program structure, showing the necessity of this approach. In this example, two atomic 180s are shown as shaded nodes in the XHTML tree.
And 182 have been selected for placement in the group.
The path to both atomics starts at the XHTML "A" node. After that point, the two paths will branch off,
Individual atomics (shown in section I) are found in path "B" and path "CDEF". In Section II, the structure of the web page, ie, XHTML, has changed, and an "X" node 184 has been introduced into the structure due to the structure change. Traditional "B" and "CDE"
The "F" path is no longer valid, but the selected content can still be located by the enhanced path description, so that there is no hindrance to content extraction by dynamic web pages. In this example, the enhanced route is
“Descendant :: B” and “desce
ndant :: E / descendant :: F / ".

Referring back to FIG. 22, the XPATH robustifier includes one or more software
One or more modules can be provided that are executed using an application or module.
The module may include a comparison module 170, a turning point node identifier module 172, and a module for determining whether to use a descendant axis, also called an axis verifier 174. These modules provide an enhanced path to the selected content so that the appropriate content of the dynamic web page can be located, even if the structure of the hierarchical data storage changes, as in the case of dynamic web pages. It works to determine automatically.

This enrichment process can be divided into several individual methods performed by the modules described above. In general, the method determines how similar a set of XHTML nodes are to each other to identify relevant nodes, in particular, if the node containing the target content is XHT
A comparison method that determines how it differs from other nodes of the same type in the ML tree or sub-tree, the number of nodes containing target content that helps to improve the search by effectively partitioning the page into smaller areas. How to find parent "turning point" node and "descendan"
The method includes determining whether the t :: "axis can be placed before the turning point node.

Each of these methods is described in further detail below. For the purpose of enhanced processing, XHTML
Some assumptions are made about how the structure of a document will change with dynamic web pages. The first assumption is that certain nodes, such as turning point nodes, content containing nodes, relation group nodes, etc., do not change type or are not removed from the page (relation group nodes are RML group nodes). Node in the XHTML tree with the smallest subtree that contains all children). The second assumption is that these nodes will retain the original relationship as to what is what descendant in the tree. The last assumption is that only one XHTML page is given as input to the process, but in another embodiment of the method,
Additional input may include multiple XHTML pages to help determine the validity of the information used during the enrichment and generalization processes. Under these assumptions, the Robustifier will respond to any other possible changes to the XHTML tree structure such that various dynamic web pages may have wireless pages generated from the dynamic web pages according to the present invention. Will create a working path. By way of example, a website may have one or more news articles such that each article is contained within a table cell. If a website adds another article by creating another cell in the table, the generalized path will identify and extract the additional article because of the atomic type, that is, the table has not changed. Become.

In another embodiment of the robustifier, the process may be recursive. In the preferred embodiment, there may only be one turning point node. However, once a turning point node is found, the path from the relationship group node to the turning point node is another subpath that can then be similarly enhanced. Further, a predicate can be found for the turning point node, and another turning point node can be found between the original turning point node and the relation group node. The process can then be repeated for a new turning point node, and so on. Allowing this type of recursion increases the likelihood that there is no need to use a completely specific path to the content, except in rare circumstances.

The entire enhancement process is organized so that certain results are prioritized. The most favorable result is that a node can be identified only by its local characteristics. This is first tested using the comparison method described below. If this fails, the node is checked to see if it can be identified by local characteristics, provided that the node is in a particular subtree of the subtree of the relationship group where the root node of the particular subtree is a turning point node. To be tested. If that fails, a future recursive version of the algorithm will attempt to find a particular subtree of the tree inside another particular subtree of the relationship group subtree, in which case more than one By finding many turning points nodes, the content can be uniquely identified, and so on. If all this fails,
The only possibility is to completely specify the path to the content. Here, a node comparison method according to the present invention will be described.

FIGS. 24A and 24B are flowcharts illustrating a node comparison method 190 according to the present invention for identifying relevant nodes. In particular, it is necessary to determine a method of distinguishing the target content from the similar type but other than the target by the robustifier and the comparison method.
For example, in FIG. 23, one of the “F” nodes is the target, but the other is not, and a method of distinguishing the two nodes so as to ensure that the appropriate node is extracted by the enhancement processing. It is important to judge. Therefore, in order to distinguish between the target content and the content other than the target, the robustifier selects and forms a “related node”, which is referred to as the target node above. Relevant node sets related node to all other "non-conforming"
In order to distinguish it from a node, it is formed by a set of specifiers that can be used instead of a specific route, and the specifiers may include properties such as which attributes or children the node has.
These specifiers allow the robustifier to compare each of the potential mismatches in the parent node's subtree with the relevant nodes, which are described in further detail below.

In the comparison method, the following information regarding the node is used as a reference for the comparison. The information is
The siblings of the node, the descendants of the node, the immediate children of the node, the attributes of the node, and the position of the node between the siblings.
This information set can be easily modified to include other information, such as the attributes of its immediate parent and child nodes. The actual information set used for the comparison is not necessarily a fundamental aspect of the method and may vary. All that is required in the method is that there is a set of information that is used as a basis for comparison, and this information can be easily changed as needs change.

In general, the comparison method seeks to determine what is unique about a related node, which is often a node containing some content but may be a relationship group node. A particular class, XHTMLInformer, is used to contain information about nodes, and this class is also used to make comparisons. For example,
Just like a set of mathematics, two XHTMLInf
XHTMLInform, which can intersect the orderer and contains only the information shared between the two nodes
Return mer. Other operations include difference and union,
Each at one node but not at the other, or
Returns what is on both nodes. Each relevant X
HTML nodes are represented by RML nodes in the current paradigm in which the present invention is described, and each RML node has a parent node (except for the root <rml> node). The X represented by the parent of the RML node by the preprocessing method
The HTML node is actually the XHTML of the RML node
L nodes are guaranteed to be ancestors in the XHTML tree.

The method begins at step 192 with a search using the entire subtree of XHTML nodes corresponding to the RML parent of the relevant RML node. In step 194, the subtree is traversed, and in step 196, the relevant RM
Find all XHTML nodes that are the same kind of XHTML node corresponding to the L node. Each node found during the traversal is associated with an associated X using a difference operation at step 198.
Compared to HTML node. By difference operation, for each found node, why the relevant XHTM
It is clarified whether it is different from the L node. The result of the difference is obtained in step 200 by an XHTMLInformer that includes those at the relevant XHTML node but not at other nodes.
Is stored. The method then determines, at step 202, if there are more located nodes and returns to step 198 to process other located nodes. XHTML
If all nodes have been processed to generate the Informer, the method continues.

As a result of the above processing, XHTMLInfo
A list of mers is provided, and each XHTMLInfo
mer contains information about relevant nodes that make a difference from other specific nodes in the tree. In step 204, all of these XHTMLInformers are crossed to set a set of information (another XHTMLInformer) that describes what makes the relevant node different from all other nodes.
(stored in the former). In step 206, this is called a cross test, ie, the XHT at the end of this comparison.
If the MLInformer is not empty, there will be something in step 208 that makes the relevant node unique. This information can then be placed in the predicate of step 208 to uniquely identify this node in the XPath expression. Therefore, if this test is successful,
In step 210, the entire route can be replaced with "descendant :: node (information)", in which case the XHTM at the end of the comparison in step 208
This is included in the LInformer, and the enhancement method ends the processing of the relevant specific node.

If the cross test fails in step 206, there is no single unique piece of information at the relevant node. However, there can be one piece of information that distinguishes a relevant node from some nodes and another piece of information that distinguishes a relevant node from the rest. As an example, suppose that there are four nodes that are differentially processed at relevant nodes.
The differences can be the following four sets: That is, (ABC), (BCD), (CDA), and (D
AB). The intersection of these four sets is a zero set, but the union of the sets is (ABCD). Note that the current node has all of (ABCD), but none of the other nodes have all of this information, and to uniquely specify the node, the union (ABC)
D) can be used. This is called a union test (step 212), and is performed only when none of the differences is empty (a difference is empty if a node subjected to difference processing by a related node cannot be distinguished from a related node) That means).

If the union test is successful (step 21)
4) The method returns to steps 208 and 210 where the path is replaced. In summary, if the difference test or union test is successful, not only is there no need for a relative path, but it also has determined what is unique about that node. That information can be used directly as a predicate in an XPath expression. If both tests fail,
Since there is no designation for any other genus that uniquely identifies the node, the relative path must be used for the relevant node. Here, a method of turning point node identification according to the present invention will be described.

FIGS. 25A and 25B are flowcharts illustrating a turning point node identification method 220 according to the present invention. In particular,
If the node's specifier list is too large or too small, the robustifier must use a different approach than the comparison method to help identify the correct path to the selected content. Turning point node discovery is one such method of identification. Turning points nodes are formed as important components of the path to the content in the tree, or as nodes identified as "most important turning points". For example, in FIG. 23, there are two “F” nodes without a specifier that distinguishes one from the other. However, if the path needs to go through an "E" node, the "F" node selection set is narrowed to one target "F" node. Thus, the "E" node is the most important turning point in the tree in that it can be used to identify target nodes while avoiding unnecessary nodes.

By identifying turning point nodes, the entire region of the page containing potential mismatches can be excluded. For example, as shown in FIG.
Are presented as a matrix in a table. In XHTML, tables use table row tags and table column tags to divide pages into areas where content can be placed. The ability to identify content by specific rows and columns of a table is an XHT
This is essentially equivalent to identifying a specific node as a turning point in the ML. By focusing on the turning point subtree, the robustifier can locate the selected content while only searching a particular area of a given page. That is, a turning point node 218 and a turning point group 219 are shown in FIG.

Referring back to FIGS. 25A and 25B, if the union test of the comparison method fails, the turning point identification method can be used to find a turning point node somewhere along the relative path. . The turning point method is expected to reduce the search interval and increase the likelihood of finding a unique one for the relevant node. The method started from the top of the subtree, i.e., the XHTML node at the head of the relative path stored at step 222 with the associated RML node.
Subtree is level 1 relative to the next parent in the tree
Move it down by one to make it smaller,
As shown in steps 224 to 244 corresponding to each step of the comparison algorithm, the entire process of performing the intersection / union test step can be repeated, and the description of the entire process is omitted here.

If the intersection / union test succeeds abruptly on this reduced subtree, then at step 246, the next parent is designated as a turning point node. The turning point node is important because it specifies a small subtree that can be uniquely specified when a related node cannot be uniquely specified from within a large subtree. If no turning point is found, i.e. the intersection / union test has never succeeded in finding a particular for the relevant node from within any subtree, the method causes another node in the path at step 247. If so, the process loops back to step 224 to process the next node on the path. If no turning point node is found on the path to the target node, the enrichment process fails, and in step 248 it is necessary to use a completely specific path to the relevant node. Here, regarding the turning point node, the descend
A method for identifying whether or not ndant :: axis can be effectively applied will be described.

Since the XPATH expression enables path information other than a simple node name, an axis or a predicate can be used to easily identify a target content. The axis defines where in the tree to find the current content node based on its relationship to the node. Common axes are “descendant ::”, “siblin
g :: "," ancestor :: ", and" par
ent :: ". For example, if the route is “A / B / sib”
If ling :: C ", the path starts at" A ", moves to" B ", and looks at all siblings of" B "to find" C ". In FIG. 23, the current node is “A”.
The “B” node has the route “descendant :: B”
(Case I and Case II
In both cases), then the direct descendants (child nodes)
Any "B" node below node "A" will be selected, regardless of whether it is further down the tree. Similarly, the route to the target “F” node is “desce”.
ndant :: E / descendant :: F "could be written. This path finds the descendants of the "A" node, which is the "E" node, and then "F"
Find descendants of node "E". As such, "turning points"("E" nodes) are executed in XPath.

In addition to the axes described above, predicates are also possible. In particular, to describe the characteristics of the target node,
One or more XPath predicates can be used. Therefore, each stage along the XPath is described as “axi
s :: node_name (predicate) ". This is useful, for example, when the axis has selected all current node descendants as a node set, but needs to identify the content more specifically. A common predicate is
In particular, it will include attributes. For example, if the target “C” node has the “tacos” attribute, the route is “A / B /
C (tacos) ". This predicate is an example of a specifier, as described above.

The XPath expression can be enhanced because both the axis and the predicate can uniquely identify a node without a complete specific path. actually,
If the relevant content node has the appropriate number of specifiers to identify it in the largest subtree, the entire path can be replaced with "descendant :: node (description)" where the specification is a predicate. For example, if the target "F" node has a single attribute of "pizza" and the other "F" nodes have a single attribute of "burger", those attributes can be used without using the "E" node. Could be distinguished. The enhancement path from the “A” node would be “descendant :: F (pizza)”. Predicates are used to specify relevant nodes. These predicates may also be used to uniquely determine a turning point node.

FIG. 27 shows a method 2 for confirming the axis according to the present invention.
FIG. In particular, descend to identify a turning point node when certain conditions are met.
ant :: axis can be used. This allows a structural change to occur between the turning point node and the relationship group node. Since a predicate that uniquely specifies the content from the turning point node is a necessary condition for having a turning point node, descendan
Note that the t :: axis can be used automatically from the turning point node to the content.

In the method, from the largest subtree identified in step 262, which is a subtree of relational group nodes, all other nodes of the same type as the turning point node are identified in step 26.
You can find it at 4. In step 266, each node is examined to see if it has descendants that match the given content node with specific information about the content node. Desc if any of the descendants match the current node
Since the end :: axis name does not uniquely identify the current node, the descendant :: axis name cannot be used, and the method ends. Stage 2
At 68, it is determined if there are any more nodes, and the method loops back to step 266 to test each additional node. After testing all of the nodes, if none of those nodes has such a descendant, step 27
0 for d at the turning point node from the relation group node
It is safe to use escendant :: axis. That is, the information descendant :: axis can be used to designate a turning point only if the above conditions are met.

According to another embodiment of the robustifier, multiple XHTML pages, each page labeled as desired by the user, may be used as input to the robustifier, which may be multiple XHTML pages. Are merged to form a single style sheet that creates a new page from In particular, several pages of the same type (eg, several eBay auction item pages) may be used. For example, assume that a user wants to place all of the eBay auctioned items on a wireless device. The goal of the wireless page generation system is to create a single style sheet that will correctly translate all of those similar pages. Originally, the user had to generate one example auction item page, so the style sheet created would then work on all auction item pages. The XPATH robustifier helps this to happen because it attempts to address possible changes in the structure of the auctioned item page on an item-by-item basis.

However, it is assumed here that the user can determine how he wants the style sheet to behave on several pages of the same kind. Each of these pages
Although qualitatively similar, their tree structure in XHTML may be slightly different. The structural difference between some example pages is, in effect, a sampling of how the page actually changes. This sampling provides additional clues to the robustifier, so that it does not have to blindly guess how the page may change, but in fact, It has a variation example prepared as information. To better understand the multi-page enhancement according to the present invention, some examples are provided below.

First, assume that the robustifier will typically select a particular node "E" in the tree as a turning point node. However, the enhancement process notices by looking at other trees that the "E" node is not always present. This forces the robustifier to revoke the "E" node as a tipping point node and instead select another tipping point node. That is, multiple pages provide additional information to the enhancement process on how to enhance the RML code.
Second, assume that the robustifier knows that a particular attribute "pizza" is likely to uniquely identify the relevant node. Next, in at least one of the other examples, assume that "pizza" does not exist as an attribute of the same related node. This would revoke the "pizza" qualification as a valid identifier for the relevant node, so that the robustifier would either look at other attributes or find a tipping point node to narrow the search. I have to do it. Again, multiple pages provide additional information to the enhancement process.

According to yet another embodiment of the present invention, X
There may be a reverse enhancement process in which the SL style sheet and several XHTML pages can be input. XH based on stylesheets and some XHTML goals
Each RML of a TML page may be generated. Using the reverse enhancement process, the user may manually fine-tune the stylesheet generated by the wireless page generation system, and then subsequently make additional changes to XSL from within the GUI environment. Here, an example of the wireless page generation processing according to the present invention will be described.

FIG. 28 illustrates a producer using the integrated desktop GUI interface 50 according to the present invention to add an atomic to a new page.
In particular, the user can select a particular web page to move into the project window, as described above. The user can then select the configuration tab, so that the selected web page is in XHTML
Is converted to The user may then select and add atomic 280 to page navigation portion 54 by highlighting the selected atomic as shown in FIG. The user interface may display a menu so that the user can select to add an atomic to the root group, add an atomic to the menu, or add an atomic to the form. In the illustrated example, the selected atomic has been added to the root node of the page navigation portion 54 as an introductory node.

FIGS. 29a to 29c show the producers forming the rule set according to the invention. The ruleset defines how the wireless page delivery system should convert content and services from desktop web pages to wireless pages. Because rule sets often apply to more than one URL,
The producer uses the URL manager to provide each URL
It can be tailored to your needs. FIG.
As shown in 9a, the user has selected a URL 290 to accompany the style sheet. As shown in FIG. 29b, the producer may select an element 292 of the URL to be mapped to the style sheet, or select an element from a drop-down menu. FIG.
As shown in c, the producer may define a set value 294 associated with a particular URL element 296. In the example shown, the URL element “this = that” must be inside a URL element, and the value of the element (eg, this = that) is significant, so “this = other”. URLs with elements are not processed using a specific rule set and style sheet.

FIG. 30 is a diagram showing a producer that arranges a rule set according to the present invention. In particular, when the operation tree of the operation part 54 is constructed, the producer:
32a and 32b, as shown in FIG.
You can deploy a project to view wireless pages on an emulator. The placement manager may send the XSL stylesheet to the wireless page delivery system so that the XSL stylesheet can be used to automatically process the appropriate web page. FIG. 31 is a diagram showing an example of the XSL style sheet 300 according to the present invention. Style sheets may be used to automatically process web pages to generate wireless pages according to the present invention.

FIGS. 32a and 32b show a cellular phone emulator 302 and a palm device emulator 304, respectively.
It is a figure showing an example of a new page above. In particular, the emulator allows the producer to review the resulting wireless page before placing the XSL stylesheet in the wireless page distribution system. 32a and 32b show the same web page as shown in FIG. 30 for the telephone and then also for the palm device. Note the difference between the two wireless pages shown, because the palm device can display more information than the phone.

While the above has been directed to specific embodiments of this invention, modifications may be made thereto without departing from the principles and spirit of the invention, the scope of which is set forth in the appended claims. It will be understood by those skilled in the art. For example, the system described herein is an XML document,
It may be used to process information from a variety of different sources, including ICE documents (content syndication forms) or Reuters distribution.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a wireless page distribution system.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a wireless web page generation system according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a portion of one or more atomically decomposed web pages in accordance with the present invention.

4a shows an example of a user interface for a GUI tool, and in particular, shows an integrated desktop according to the invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

FIG. 4b shows an example of a user interface for a GUI tool, in particular an HTML viewer according to the invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

4c shows an example of a user interface for a GUI tool, in particular a source viewer according to the invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

FIG. 5 shows an example of a wireless operating viewer according to the invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

FIG. 6 shows an example of a project manager according to the invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

7 shows an example of a ruleset addition viewer according to the invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

FIG. 8 shows a UR according to the invention in the system shown in FIG.
It is a figure showing an example of L formation manager.

9A shows an example of a wireless configuration manager according to the present invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

9B illustrates an example of a wireless configuration manager according to the present invention in the system illustrated in FIG. 2;

FIG. 10 shows an example of a deployment manager according to the invention in the system shown in FIG. 2;

FIG. 11 is a diagram illustrating an example of a dynamic web page in which the content of the web page has changed between two samples.

FIG. 12 is a diagram illustrating an example of an HTML tree in two samples of the web page of FIG. 11;

13 is a diagram illustrating an example of a relational markup language (RML) code for each sample of the web page of FIG. 11;

FIG. 14 illustrates an unprocessed agnostic RML code (ARML) for each sample of the web page of FIG. 11;

FIG. 15 shows a pre-processed and enhanced agnostic RML code for each sample of the web page of FIG. 11 (A
FIG.

FIG. 16 is a diagram showing a generalized agnostic RML code (ARML) that can retrieve appropriate content from any of the samples of the web page shown in FIG. 11;

FIG. 17 is a diagram showing an example of an XSL style sheet for correctly retrieving contents from any web page sample according to the present invention.

FIG. 18A is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of an XSL generator according to the present invention.

FIG. 18B is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of an XSL generator according to the present invention.

FIG. 19 is a diagram showing an example of a group node according to the present invention.

FIG. 20 is a flowchart showing a generalization method according to the present invention.

FIG. 21 is a diagram showing an example of a generalization method according to the present invention.

FIG. 22 is a block diagram showing further details of an XPATH robustifier according to the present invention.

FIG. 23 is a diagram illustrating an example of a path leading to dynamic content.

FIG. 24A is a flowchart illustrating a node comparison method according to the present invention.

FIG. 24B is a flowchart illustrating a node comparison method according to the present invention.

FIG. 25A is a flowchart illustrating a turning point node identification method according to the present invention.

FIG. 25B is a flowchart illustrating a turning point node identification method according to the present invention.

FIG. 26 is a diagram showing an example of a turning point method according to the present invention.

FIG. 27 is a flowchart illustrating a progeny identification method according to the present invention.

FIG. 28 illustrates a producer adding an atomic to a new page in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 29a illustrates a producer forming a ruleset according to the present invention.

FIG. 29b illustrates a producer forming a ruleset according to the present invention.

FIG. 29c illustrates a producer forming a ruleset according to the present invention.

FIG. 30 illustrates a producer placing a rule set according to the present invention.

FIG. 31 is a diagram showing an example of an XSL style sheet according to the present invention.

FIG. 32a shows an example of a new page on a mobile phone.

FIG. 32b shows an example of a new page on the palm device.

[Explanation of symbols]

 15 Wireless Web Page Delivery Part 22 Web Page Generation System 23 Rear End Part 24 Front End Part 25 RML Builder Module 26 XSL Generator Module 27 Stylesheet Database 28 Rule Set Construction Tool Set 29 Rule Set Database 30 Project Construction Tool Set 31 Wireless Website Project Database

 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued on the front page (72) Inventor Michael Scott Homan United States of America 94108 San Francisco Clay Treat # 12 1160 (72) Inventor Ivan Arajov United States of America 94114 San Francisco Twenty-third Street 4418 (72) Inventor Jose Fa Kirkland United States 94117 San Francisco Webster Street 76 (72) Inventor Jacob Sullivan United States 94122 San Francisco La Playa # 3 1348 F-term (reference) 5B075 ND34 NK43 5B082 GA02 HA05

Claims (43)

[Claims] Means for retrieving an information source; means for extracting from the information source one or more elements each having a piece of content in the information source; An apparatus for processing an information source, comprising: means for generating a data structure representing a hierarchical structure; and means for processing the data structure to retrieve a predetermined element from the information source. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the extracting unit includes: a page browsing part for browsing a page from which the element is extracted; a page navigator part for browsing a hierarchical list of the elements extracted from the page; Further comprising: a user that pulls an element from the page browsing portion to the page navigator portion to extract the page browsing portion; and an element characteristic portion that browses the characteristics of the elements in the list of the page navigator portion. , The page navigator and portions of the element properties allow the user to quickly extract elements from the page by simultaneously browsing the page and the hierarchical list of elements. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that: 3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the page comprises an HTML web page, and wherein the elements further comprise atomic and atomic groups. 4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising: an HTML browsing portion indicating an HTML code of the web page; a component indicating a graphic configuration of the web page; and a source portion indicating a source code of the web page. Item 3. The apparatus according to Item 3. 5. A data structure generating means for converting the information source into a first hierarchical structure including the contents and the hierarchical structure, wherein the element is searched for even if the information source changes. Means for determining a generalized path to the element of the information source, as described in claim 1. 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the first hierarchical structure includes one or more nodes, each containing an element, where a particular element is located at a first node of the hierarchical structure; Children are means for comparing a target node containing the data with each other node of the hierarchy to construct a unique node identifier, and wherein the unique identifier is located during the comparison. Means for identifying a turning point node, which is a node of the hierarchical structure that uniquely identifies the target node, which is associated with the target node, if the target node does not exist, and the node matching the target node Means for discovering whether it is valid to apply a descendant axis to a turning point node, which occurs when there are no descendants of the apparatus. 7. The comparing means identifies a node of the same type as the target node in the sub-tree of the hierarchical structure having a first node of a complete specific path to the target node at a root node. Means and the target for each of the identified nodes to determine which set of node information fragments may be used to uniquely identify the target node from the identified nodes. 7. The method of claim 6, further comprising: generating a comparison with a node; and determining an actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. apparatus. 8. The intersection and union of the sets of node information fragments to determine the actual node information fragments used to uniquely identify the target node. The apparatus of claim 7, further comprising means for determining 9. The method according to claim 9, wherein the means for identifying the turning point is of the same type as the target node in the subtree of the hierarchical structure having the first node of the complete specific path to the target node at a root node. Means for identifying each of the identified nodes, and each of the identified nodes for determining which set of node information fragments may be used to uniquely identify the target node from the identified nodes. Means for generating a comparison between the target node and the target node; and means for determining the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. An apparatus according to claim 6. 10. The intersection and sum of the set of node information fragments to determine the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. The apparatus of claim 9, further comprising means for determining a set. 11. The means for finding the axis comprises means for identifying the largest subtree of the hierarchical structure having nodes from the relative path as a root containing the first node, and all nodes of the same type. Means for identifying as a turning point node, means for determining whether the descendants of each identified node match the descendants of the turning point node, and any descendants of the identified node being descendants of the turning point node. 11. The apparatus of claim 10, further comprising means for effectively and securely assigning the descendant axis to the turning point node if not. 12. The method according to claim 5, wherein the hierarchical structure includes a tree structure associated with the web page, and the data in the target node includes a piece of content associated with the web page. An apparatus according to claim 1. 13. The means for determining a generalized path includes means for traversing the hierarchical structure to determine a generalized path identifier that leads to the first node through the hierarchical structure. An apparatus according to claim 5. 14. The information source may include one or more H
The apparatus of claim 1, comprising web pages in TML and XML formats, wherein the hierarchical structure comprises a relational markup language. 15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein said means for processing comprises an XSL stylesheet. 16. Searching for an information source; extracting one or more elements from the information source, each element having a piece of content in the information source; A method of processing an information source, comprising: generating a data structure representing a hierarchical structure; and processing the data structure to retrieve a predetermined element from the information source. 17. The extracting step includes: browsing a page from which an element is extracted; browsing a hierarchical list of elements extracted from the page; and extracting the element from the page. Further comprising: a user pulling an element from the page browsing portion to the page navigator portion; and browsing a property of an element in a list of the page navigator portion, wherein the page browsing, page navigator, and Wherein each part of the element characteristics enables the user to quickly extract elements from the page by simultaneously browsing the page and the hierarchical list of elements. The method according to item 16, 18. The method of claim 17, wherein the page comprises an HTML web page, and wherein the elements further comprise an atomic and an atomic group. 19. The method of claim 18, further comprising: indicating the HTML code of the web page; indicating a graphic configuration of the web page; and indicating a source code of the web page. The described method. 20. The data structure generating step includes: converting the information source into a first hierarchical structure including the content and the hierarchical structure; and searching for the element even if the information source changes. Determining a generalized path to the element of the information source, as described. 21. The first hierarchical structure includes one or more nodes, each containing an element, where a particular element is located at a first node of the hierarchical structure; The determinator comprises comparing a target node containing the data with each other node of the hierarchical structure to construct a unique node identifier, and locating the unique identifier during the comparison. If not,
Identifying a turning point node that is associated with the target node and that is a node of the hierarchical structure that uniquely identifies the target node; and determining a descendant of the node that matches the target node. Finding if it is valid to apply the descendant axis to the turning point node, which occurs if there is no such point.
The method described in. 22. The comparing step includes, in a root node, a node of the same type as the target node in the hierarchical subtree having the first node of the complete specific path to the target node. Identifying each of the identified nodes and the target to determine which set of node information fragments may be used to uniquely identify the target node from the identified nodes. 22. The method of claim 21, further comprising: generating a comparison with a node to be determined; and determining the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. The method described in. 23. The determining step includes determining the intersection and sum of the set of node information fragments to determine the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. The method of claim 22, further comprising determining a set. 24. The step of identifying the turning point comprises the same type as the target node in the hierarchical subtree having the first node of the complete specific path to the target node at a root node. Identifying each of the identified nodes to determine which set of node information fragments may be used to uniquely identify the target node from the identified nodes. Generating a comparison between the target node and the target node; and determining the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. A method according to claim 21. 25. The determining step further comprises determining the intersection and sum of the set of node information fragments to determine the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. The method of claim 24, further comprising determining a set. 26. The step of locating the axis comprises identifying a largest subtree of the hierarchy having nodes from the relative path as the root containing the first node. Identifying a node as the turning point node; determining whether a descendant of each identified node matches a descendant of the turning point node;
26. The method of claim 25, further comprising: if any of the descendants of the identified node does not match a descendant of the turning point node, effectively and securely assigning the descendant axis to the turning point node. Method. 27. The method according to claim 20, wherein the hierarchical structure includes a tree structure associated with a web page, and the target node data includes a piece of content associated with the web page. The described method. 28. The method of claim 20, wherein determining the generalized path includes traversing the hierarchical structure to determine a path identifier to reach the first node through the hierarchical structure. The method described in. 29. The information source comprising one or more H
17. The method of claim 16, comprising web pages in TML and XML formats, wherein the hierarchical structure comprises a relational markup language. 30. The method according to claim 29, wherein said processing step comprises generating an XSL stylesheet. 31. A page browsing portion for browsing a page from which an atomic and atomic group is extracted, and wherein the page pulls an atomic therefrom to extract the atomic from the page. A page navigator part for browsing a hierarchical list of atomics extracted from, and an atomic property part for browsing atomic properties in the list of page navigator parts, wherein the page browsing, page navigator, and element An HTML web page, wherein each part of a property allows the user to quickly extract an atomic from the page by simultaneously viewing the page and the hierarchical list of atomics. A graph that extracts one or more atomics from Fick user interface. 32. A means for browsing the page from which the atomic has been extracted, and wherein the user pulls the atomic therefrom from the page browsing means to extract the atomic from the page.
Means for navigating the page comprising means for viewing a hierarchical list of atomics extracted from the page; and wherein the user simultaneously views the page, the hierarchical list of atomics, and the property of the selected atomic. A graphical user for extracting one or more elements from an HTML web page, comprising: an atomic property generating means for extracting the property from the atomic selected by the user. ·interface. 33. A method for generating a hierarchical representation of a web page having atomic and atomic groups, the method comprising: selecting an atomic graphical representation from a page being viewed by the user; Pulling the graphical representation of the atomic into a page navigator portion, as shown in a hierarchical relationship with other atomics in the page; and so that the user can view the atomic properties.
Automatically extracting the atomic properties from the atomic when selected by the user. 34. A method for processing a web page that repurposes the web page for one or more wireless devices having different screen formats by determining a path to each piece of web page content. Generating a first hierarchical structure including the structure of the web page and the content of the web page based on the web page; and the structure of the web page indicating a route to the content. Generating a second hierarchical structure of the web page from the first hierarchical structure, and generating a relative path that leads to the content of the web page and is inserted into the second hierarchical structure. In the second hierarchical structure so that a content search using the path to the content will find the content even if the web page has changed. Method characterized by comprising the steps of strengthening the path, the. 35. A means for retrieving an information source, a page for browsing a page from which the element is extracted, extracting one or more elements each comprising a piece of content in the information source from the information source. A browsing portion, a page navigator portion for browsing a hierarchical list of elements extracted from the page, and a user pulling elements from the page browsing portion to the page navigator portion to extract elements from the page. Further comprising an element characteristic part for browsing the characteristics of the elements of the list of the page navigator part, wherein each of the page browsing, page navigator, and element characteristics is performed by the user, Extracting means for simultaneously extracting elements from the page by simultaneously browsing the hierarchical list of Means for transforming the information source into a first hierarchical structure representing the hierarchical structure of the element of the source, including the content and the hierarchical structure, wherein the element is located even if the information source changes. Means for generating a data structure, comprising: means for determining a generalized path to the element of the information source, wherein the first hierarchical structure is such that the specific element is a first element of the hierarchical structure.
And one or more nodes, each containing an element, located at a node of the first node containing the data to identify a unique node identifier. Means for comparing the first node with the other nodes of the hierarchical structure, and uniquely identifying the first node associated with the first node if a unique identifier is not found during the comparison. Means for identifying a turning point node, which is a node of a hierarchical structure, and means for designating a descendant axis as a turning point node when there is no descendant of the node that matches the first node. To process information sources. 36. The apparatus of claim 35, wherein the page comprises an HTML web page, and wherein the elements further comprise an atomic and an atomic group. 37. The web page further includes an HTML browsing portion indicating the HTML code, a component indicating the graphic configuration of the web page, and a source portion indicating the source code of the web page. 37. The apparatus of claim 36, wherein: 38. The determinator comprises: means for comparing the target node containing the data with each other node of the hierarchical structure to construct a unique node identifier; Means for identifying a turning point node, which if not found during the comparison, is a node of the hierarchical structure that uniquely identifies the target node, associated with the target node; Happens if there is no descendant of the node that matches the node
Means for discovering whether applying a descendant axis to a turning point node is valid.
An apparatus according to claim 1. 39. The comparing means identifies a node of the same type as the target node in the subtree of the hierarchical structure having a first node of the complete specific path to the target node at a root node. Means to
Each of the identified nodes and the target node are identified to determine which set of node information fragments may be used to uniquely identify the target node from the identified nodes. The apparatus of claim 38, further comprising: means for generating a comparison; and means for determining an actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. 40. The means for determining comprises determining the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node by determining the intersection and sum of the set of node information fragments. The apparatus of claim 39, further comprising means for determining a set. 41. The means for identifying a turning point is of the same type as the target node in the hierarchical subtree having the first node of the complete specific path to the target node at a root node. Means for identifying each of the identified nodes, and each of the identified nodes for determining which set of node information fragments may be used to uniquely identify the target node from the identified nodes. Means for generating a comparison between the target node and the target node; and means for determining the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node. An apparatus according to claim 38. 42. The means for determining comprises determining the actual node information fragment used to uniquely identify the target node by determining the intersection and sum of the set of node information fragments. 42. The apparatus of claim 41, further comprising means for determining a set. 43. The means for finding the axis comprises: means for identifying a largest subtree of the hierarchical structure having nodes from the relative path as a root containing the first node; Means for identifying as a turning point node, means for determining whether the descendants of each identified node match the descendants of the turning point node, and any descendants of the identified node being descendants of the turning point node. 43. The apparatus of claim 42, further comprising means for effectively and securely assigning said descendant axis to said turning point node if not.