JP2002278997A - Information collecting device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information collecting device with high operability. SOLUTION: An object managing part 34 manages a conference and data as objects and manages their link information. A user specification part 31 specifies a user, a place specification part 32 specifies a place and a time specification part 33 specifies time. When they are outputted to the object managing part 34, the object managing part 34 retrieves the object by using these information and obtains the object of the conference, for example. The object of related data is obtained by using link information and it is outputted to an object display part 37. The object display part 37 supplies data associated with the conference, which becomes a retrieval result.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information collecting apparatus for collecting and providing information from a database, and more particularly to improving the operability thereof.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-137653, "Information processing apparatus, image forming apparatus, image forming system, image forming method, and computer-readable recording medium storing a program for causing a computer to execute the method"
For example, there is disclosed an information processing apparatus that searches for materials related to a meeting using information on a place and time in order to efficiently distribute materials used in the meeting. Also, JP-A-8-2728
No. 03, “Information Processing System Using Real Objects”
2. Description of the Related Art There is disclosed a system for electronically associating information on a real object, which enables an intuitive reference and operation of digitized information by enabling a correspondence to be set interactively. .

[0003]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional system, an interactive search step is required in order for the user to specify materials related to the conference or digitized information. There was a problem that it was low.

The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide an information collecting apparatus capable of improving operability.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention for solving the above-mentioned problems of the prior art is an information collecting apparatus, wherein an event object representing an event is linked to at least one of the event objects. A database that stores and manages data objects that represent data related to the event object, and starts from the event object or the data object specified by the user and traces the link set in the database. Means for acquiring an event object and / or a data object to be executed as a related object, and means for presenting the acquired related object to a user in a format preset for each content. .

Further, the present invention for solving the above-mentioned problem of the conventional example is an information collecting method, comprising: an event object representing an event; and an event object linked to at least one of the event objects. Using a database that stores and manages data objects expressing data related to the event object or the data object specified by the user as a starting point, following the link set in the database, the related event object And / or a step of acquiring the data object as a related object, and a step of presenting the acquired related object to a user in a format preset for each content.

Here, it is preferable that the event objects are linked to each other for related events, and are accumulated and managed in the database.

Further, it is preferable that the data object includes at least one of an electronic document, information on a book, multimedia data, and information on another user related to the linked event object. .

Further, these information collecting apparatuses and methods are
It may be realized by software using a computer.

[0010]

[First Embodiment] A first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. In the following description, an event will be described as an example of a meeting, and a data object will be described as an example in which a data object includes materials used in each meeting, e-mail addresses of meeting participants, and annotation information related to the meeting. . As shown in FIG. 1, the information collecting apparatus 10 according to the embodiment of the present invention is connected to a database 20, and includes an operation unit 11, a control unit 12, a storage unit 13, a display unit 14, and a communication unit 15 , An external storage unit 16, and a printing unit 17, and these units are connected to each other by a bus.

The operation unit 11 is a keyboard, a mouse, or the like, and outputs the operation contents of the user to the control unit 12.
The control unit 12 performs a process of collecting information to be provided to the user. The processing of the control unit 12 will be described later in detail. The storage unit 13 operates as a work memory of the control unit 12. The display unit 14 is a display that displays information according to an instruction input from the control unit 12. The communication unit 15 transmits data input from the control unit 12 via the telecommunication network, and outputs data arriving via the telecommunication network to the control unit 12. The external storage unit 16 reads a program executed by the control unit 12 from a computer-readable storage medium and outputs the program to the control unit 12. The printing unit 17 prints information according to an instruction input from the control unit 12.

The database 20 includes a conference object (corresponding to the event object of the present invention) comprising a combination of information for identifying a conference (conference identifier; conference ID), date and time of the conference, and information of the conference venue.
Person I as information of the person who may participate in the conference
A person data object including a combination of D, name, and contact information (e-mail address, etc.); a material data object including electronic materials used in at least one meeting; an annotation data object including an annotation character string; The related conference objects are linked to each other as shown in FIG. 2 (indicated by arrows in the drawing), and each conference object is linked to a person object which is a participant of the conference object. Each conference object is linked to a material data object and an annotation data object used in the conference. These person data object, material data object, and annotation data object correspond to an example of the data object of the present invention, and these data objects and event objects are collectively referred to as “objects”.

Here, the information collection processing of the control unit 12 will be described. The control unit 12 receives a designation of an object serving as a key of information collection from the user via the operation unit 11, and follows the link while sequentially selecting the link destination object from the designated object as a starting point. Select an object and gather information.

More specifically, the control unit 12 receives a user's name, the date and time of the conference to be attended, and the venue, and receives a conference object representing the conference corresponding to the date and time from the database 20 from the database 20. Search for. Then, the link is traced starting from the conference object. As described above, since a plurality of person data objects, a plurality of material data objects, and annotation data objects representing the participants are associated with the conference object, these data objects are selected while following the link. . Further, if the meeting object that is the starting point is one of a series of meetings that are continuously held, a series of meeting objects is selected by following the link between the meeting objects, and the information is transmitted. Collected.

The control unit 12 displays the plurality of objects selected in this manner on the display unit 14 in a format predetermined according to the contents. Further, when a print instruction is received from the user, the print unit 17 is instructed to print the information. Here, the content displayed on the display unit 14 is, for example, as shown in FIG. Here, since the conference object is used as a starting point, the conference schedule and other conference-related information (A), the participant person data object (B), and the material data object (C)
And part of the contents of the annotation data object (D) are displayed as lists. In addition, the linking of each data object and each event object can be set and released here, whereby the participants and materials of the conference can be registered (in the drawing, “register” and “add”). Button, such as "Delete"). Also, a list (P) of other conference objects obtained by following the link of the conference object is displayed.

A program for displaying the entire contents of each data object is associated with these lists. When an item on the list is clicked, the entire contents of the data object are displayed. For example, when the person data object (B) on the list is clicked, information as shown in FIG. 4 is displayed. What is characteristic in the present embodiment is that a list of conference objects linked to this person data object is displayed (E).

According to the present embodiment, materials related to a conference (or reference information (URL, etc.) thereof) are managed by the material database 20, and the participation target conference and the related The meeting materials to be acquired are obtained.

It is also preferable that a flag indicating which material was printed in the past is managed for each participant, so that the past printing is displayed in the list shown in FIG. . This allows the user to easily distinguish between materials owned by the user and materials not owned by the user.

Further, the control unit 12 refers to the person data object (participant) linked to the conference object obtained as a result of the search, stores the data in the work memory of the storage unit 13, and stores It is also preferable to sequentially examine the linked person data objects (participants in each conference) and select a conference object that matches the participants stored by the participants for a predetermined ratio or more. According to this, even when the conference objects are not linked to each other (when the conference objects are not a series of conferences but are closely related conferences), it is possible to refer to the related conferences. That is, in the case of a related meeting, since the participants of each meeting are generally almost constant, the related meeting can be specified by such a method. Note that a related conference may be specified by the conference name.

In the process of sequentially following a link, it is preferable that an end condition of the process is determined in advance, and the process is ended when the end condition is satisfied.
For example, when a person data object is traced from a certain conference object, the processing is terminated on the spot without further tracing another conference object linked to the person data object. On the other hand, among the conference objects, a conference object (linked conference object) found by following a link from the initially designated conference object is further linked from the linked conference object to another conference object. Sometimes, the processing is continued by following the link. If end conditions are set so that all links are traced between event objects and links are not traced from data objects, events such as related meetings are listed, while data such as people and materials are listed. , Only those directly related to the originally specified event will be listed.

[Embodiment 2] Next, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described. As shown in FIG. 5, the information collecting device 30 according to the present embodiment includes a user specifying unit 31, a place specifying unit 32, a time specifying unit 33, a target managing unit 34, and a target presenting unit 37.

In the present embodiment, it is preferable to distribute an ID card for identifying each participant in advance to the participants of the conference as an event. That is, the user identification unit 31 reads the ID card and identifies the participant. Instead of using an ID card, a user may be specified by reading a user identifier written on a membership card or the like using a barcode scanner or the like.

The location specifying unit 32 is a barcode scanner or a GPS (Global Positioning System),
A description of a code such as a barcode and a geographical position, that is, location information expressed by longitude and latitude are acquired, and the installation location of the information collection device 30 is specified. When the location is specified by the barcode, for example, it is assumed that each prospective participant of the conference has an identifier indicating the conference room described in advance by a barcode. When the information collecting device 30 is installed for each conference hall, the location specifying unit 3
2 may be a device that simply outputs preset location information. The time specifying unit 33 includes a clock,
When the user specifying unit 31 and the place specifying unit 32 specify the participant and the place information, the time information at the specified time is output.

The object management unit 34 manages relation information that defines the relation between objects. In other words, the target management unit 34 defines a relationship among a conference object (corresponding to an event object) included in the object, a person data object representing a participant, a material data object, and other entity reference data objects. Specifically, it associates participants and materials for each meeting, and also defines the relationship between each meeting (such as meetings that are held repeatedly). This target management unit 34
Is a database, and the user identifier specified by the user specifying unit 31, the location information specified by the location specifying unit 32, and the time information specified by the time specifying unit 33 are related as a part of the search key. An object search is executed, and information on the object as the search result is output to the target presentation unit 37.

The target presentation unit 37 is a display or a printer, and displays or prints an object input from the target management unit 34.

As shown in FIG. 6A, each event object includes an identifier (ID), its contents (C), location information (P), and time information (T). The identifier is uniquely assigned to each event object, and the content (C) is the information content itself displayed by the target presentation unit 37. The person data object has an identifier (ID) as shown in FIG.
, Participant name (N), and contact information such as a mail address (M). The data structures of the other data objects are also defined in advance. Specifically, the data object includes a material data object and the like. Here, the material data object is the reference content (UR) representing the content of the material itself or the location of the material.
L, etc.), and the contents include images, moving images, audio, and the like.

The object management unit 34 manages these objects and also manages link information that defines these relationships. This link information is shown in FIG.
As shown in (c), it is composed of a relation identifier (RID), a first object identifier (ID1), and a second object identifier (ID2). The relation identifier (RID) is
It is uniquely assigned to each relationship description. Then, it specifies that the objects represented by the first object identifier and the second object identifier are linked to each other. Here, the link information is exemplified as defining the relationship between two objects, but may further define the relationship between three or more objects. In that case, more object identifiers (ID1 to IDn) are included.

The operation of the information collecting apparatus 30 according to the present embodiment will be described by taking as an example a case where related information of a conference object is collected. In the following description, the object management unit 34 uses the identifier “ID00
About "1", contents information "1st business meeting", location information "meeting room A", time information "10: 00-10: 30" (Fig. 7 (a)), and identifier "ID002" , The user name "aaaa" and the mail for the moving image data of the content information "sales promotion public relations video No. 1", where the location and time are omitted (FIG. 7B) and the identifier "ID003" Object in which the contact information such as address "aaaa@aaa.aaa" is set as the content (Fig. 7 (c))
Are stored, and link information (FIG. 7D) of the first object “ID001” with the relation identifier “001” and the second object “ID002” is stored. This means that (1) the first business meeting is held in the conference room A from 10:00 to 10:30. (2) Sales promotion publicity video No. Video 1 (3) The user aaaa has an e-mail address aaaa@aaa.a
aa is represented by the link information. ・ In the first business meeting, the sales promotion publicity video No. 1 is used.

The ID of the conference participant aaaa
When the card is supplied to the user identification unit 31 of the information collection device 30 disposed in the conference room A, the user identification unit 31
The D card is read and the user aaaa is specified as a part of the search key, and is output to the target management unit 34. On the other hand, the location identification unit 32 outputs information for identifying the conference room A, which is the installation location, to the target management unit 34 as a part of the search key. Also, when the time specifying unit 33 reads the ID card,
The information of the time is used as a part of the search key as the target management unit 34.
Output to Here, it is assumed that the information of the time represents 10:00.

The object management unit 34 obtains these pieces of information, and searches for an object managed as a search key by integrating these pieces of information. That is, here, the user “aaaa”, the location information “meeting room A”, and the time information “10: 0”
`` 0 '' becomes the search key, the object is searched, and `` I
The conference object identified by "D001"
A business meeting is identified. Further, the target management unit 34 specifies “ID002” related to “ID001” with reference to the link information, and sets the sales promotion publicity video No. One moving image is acquired and output to the target presentation unit 37.

When the user “aaaa” performs an operation of acquiring information of ID001 and ID002, the target management unit 34
For example, if the relation identifier is “002” and the first object is “I
D002 ", and the link information (FIG. 7 (e)) in which the second object is" ID003 "may be generated and stored as new link information. In addition, this link information is "Sales promotion publicity video No. 1 and user
to have a relationship with aaaa ". That is,
In the present embodiment, linking is also performed between data objects.

In the above description, it is assumed that the user identification unit 31, the location identification unit 32, the time identification unit 33, the target management unit 34, and the target presentation unit 37 are arranged in the same housing. Although described as an example, these elements may be distributed on a network and configured to be communicable with each other.

In the above-described manner, the user identification unit 31, the location identification unit 32, and the time identification unit 33 individually specify three target identifiers “ID001”, “ID004”, and “ID005”. Meetings may be specified and managed collectively based on their common attribute information (for example, when held in the same place “meeting room A”) and link information that defines the relationship between a plurality of objects. . In this case, the user can refer to an object related to another conference by specifying one of the conferences. For example, the user can refer to the material used in the other meeting “ID001” simply by specifying the meeting whose identifier is “ID004”.

[0034]

According to the present invention, a database is used which stores and manages an event object expressing an event and a data object expressing data related to the event, and starts from an object designated by a user. The information collection device collects the objects to be presented while tracing the links between the objects managed in the device and provides the object as a result of the collection to the user in a predetermined manner. Can be collected by operation.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration block diagram of an information collection device 10 according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of the contents of a material database 20.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram illustrating a display example of the information collection device 10.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram illustrating a display example of the information collection device 10.

FIG. 5 is a configuration block diagram of an information collection device 30 according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram illustrating a data structure of object and link information.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram illustrating an example of data of an object and link information.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 information collection device, 11 operation unit, 12 control unit, 1
3 storage unit, 14 display unit, 15 communication unit, 16 external storage unit, 17 printing unit, 20 database, 30 information collection device, 31 user specifying unit, 32 place specifying unit,
33 time specifying unit, 34 target management unit, 37 target presentation unit.

Claims (8)

[Claims] 1. A database for storing and managing an event object representing an event, a data object linked to at least one of the event objects and representing data related to the event object, and a database designated by a user. Means for acquiring a related event object and / or data object as a related object while tracing a link set in the database, using the event object or data object as a starting point, and the content of the acquired related object. Means for presenting to a user in a format set in advance for each user. 2. The information collecting apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the event objects are stored and managed in the database by linking related event objects to each other. 3. The information collection device according to claim 1, wherein the data object is an electronic document, information about a book, multimedia data, and another user associated with a linked event object. An information collection device comprising at least one of the following information: 4. A user designates an event object representing an event and a data object linked to at least one of the event objects and representing data relating to the event object. Acquiring a related event object and / or a data object as a related object while tracing a link set in the database with the obtained event object or data object as a starting point; A step of presenting to a user in a format set in advance for each content. 5. The information collection method according to claim 4, wherein the event objects are stored and managed in the database by linking related events to each other. 6. The information collection method according to claim 4, wherein the data object is an electronic document, information on a book, multimedia data, and another user associated with a linked event object. An information collection method comprising at least one of the following. 7. A computer, comprising: an event object representing an event; and at least one of the event objects linked to the event object.
A procedure for accumulating and managing a data object expressing data related to the event object; and starting from the event object or the data object specified by the user, following the link set in the database, A step of acquiring an event object and / or a data object as a related object; and a step of presenting the acquired related object to a user in a format preset for each content. Information gathering program. 8. A computer-readable recording medium storing the information collection program according to claim 7.