JP2008217809A - Structured document converting device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To achieve both the reduction of memory usage and the improvement in a process speed when processing a structured document by reducing resources required for operations of the structured document. <P>SOLUTION: A processing part reads the distinction information for distinguishing the structured document into key components subject to data processing and non-key components not subject to such data processing, creates new components for the non-key component to which predetermined tag names and predetermined attribute names are added, creates a tag name character string including the tag names of the non-key components connecting the tag names of the non-key components interposing delimiters therebetween, describes the new components as attribute values corresponding to the predetermined attribute names, creates a content character string including the contents of the non-key components connecting the contents of the non-key components interposing delimiters therebetween, describes it as the contents of the new components, and describes the key components in the converted structured document as it is. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

The present invention relates to a technology applied to a system that handles structured documents such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language), and in order to increase the processing speed and reduce the amount of memory used in the system, The present invention relates to a technique for converting a character string constituting a structured document.
XML documents are roughly classified into the following two types according to their characteristics. One is a data-type XML document such as a slip or a schedule, which has a large number of tags and a relatively short element content. The other is a document-type XML document such as a magazine, a manual, or a dictionary that has a relatively long element content. The present invention is a technique suitable for use when processing the former data-type XML document, and particularly used when processing an XML document expressed in a table format and treated like a database. This is a preferred technique.

  In recent years, various types of systems, such as individuals, companies, and local governments, are connected through the Internet so that they can communicate with each other, and these systems cooperate with each other to provide Web services, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), and EC. (Electronic Commerce) is being carried out. For this reason, it is necessary to exchange a wide range of information. Under such circumstances, XML has a flexible expression ability for structuring data and is suitable for processing by a computer. Therefore, when performing data exchange between the above systems and data processing in each system, , Has been attracting attention as a common base format.

  In order to make it easy to use SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) standardized by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) in 1986 on the Internet, XML was announced as W3C (World Wide Web) as its basic specification XML 1.0 in February 1998. Consortium). HTML (HyperText Markup Language), a Web page creation language, has a fixed tag and is specialized for display, and cannot meet the requirement to process information on a computer based on the tag information. There was a problem. On the other hand, XML has a language structure in which tags are freely defined by a user and meaning can be given to a character string in a document. When a document is described in such XML, the document can be processed by a computer based on tag information.

  Here, terms used in the following description will be described based on the XML standard. A string enclosed by a pair of "<" and ">" is "tag", "<string>" is "start tag", "</ string>" is "end tag", "<string /> ”Is an“ empty element tag ”, the entire character string from the start tag to the end tag is“ element ”, and the character string sandwiched between the start tag and end tag is“ element content (sometimes referred to simply as content) ” ", The name of the element described in the tag is called" element name (or tag name) ", and the additional information for the element is called" attribute ".

In the structured document, the data structure is described in such a manner that tags are embedded in the document. In this way, by adopting a structure in which the data structure is embedded in the document as a tag, flexibility and extensibility can be obtained for addition / deletion / change of the data item. By attaching it, the structured document data can be given visibility.
By the way, in order to improve the processing performance for an XML document by increasing the processing speed for an XML document or reducing the memory usage, in general, it has become mainstream to improve the performance of the base software. Yes. However, in addition to such a method, it is possible to improve the processing performance for an XML document by previously processing the XML document itself. The present invention relates to the latter method (a method for improving the processing performance by processing an XML document), and here, a conventional technique related to the latter method will be described.

[A1] Prior art 1
The issue of Nikkei Computer Magazine 2001.3.12 issue “Overturning the“ common sense ”of the Truth of Universal Illusions” that appears ”caused a problem that the processing speed slowed down when XML was introduced, and it became a problem by changing the data structure. Cases to deal with are disclosed. In the example of Sumitomo Electric Systems (see p.64-65 of the same magazine), the same type of data is described in CSV (Comma Separated Value) format, and the combined data is stored in one tag in the XML data. Embed. For example, the definition information of the XML data is changed, and the XML data for one month is grouped by separating them with commas in order of date.

In particular,
<KOUSU day = "01"> 8.0 </ KOUSU><KOUSU day = "02"> 5.5 </ KOUSU>…
… <KOUSU day = "31"> 12.8 </ KOUSU>
As such, data on daily performance that was described in separate tags,
<KOUSU day = "01,02,…, 31" data = "8.0,5.5,…, 12.8"></KOUSU>
In this format, the original document is rewritten so that it can be collected monthly.

  As a result of this change, when referring to the data for one month, the database server can be inquired only once, the XML definition information need only be transmitted once, and the data capacity is also reduced. It is said that it has decreased to 1/10. Such a technique according to the prior art 1 is a technique for collecting the same kind of data used for data processing into one tag, and is applied to specific data having the same kind of data. Depends on.

[A2] Prior art 2
When the record items (fields) of an XML document are divided into key elements (key elements) that are subject to data processing and elements (non-key elements, non-key elements) that are not subject to data processing, the following items [ As shown in [a2-1] and [a2-2], it is possible to leave the key elements and combine the non-key elements into another file. At this time, the non-key element is quoted from the key element using identification information (id) as an attribute. In such prior art 2, when data processing is performed using only key elements, the load can be limited only to the key elements. However, the target record is extracted for the purpose of search, and the key elements and non-key elements are extracted. When it is desired to display the non-key elements together, it is necessary to read the non-key elements from another file and combine them with the key elements, which is very laborious.

[A2-1] Specific example of original XML document
<Roster>
<Individual><Name> A-san </ Name><Company> Company A </ Company><Department> A Department </ Department><Address> A City </ Address><Phone> 123 </ Phone></ Person >
<Individual><Name> B-san </ Name><Company> Company B </ Company><Department> B Department </ Department><Address> B City </ Address><Phone> 456 </ Phone></ Person >
</ Roster>
[A2-2] Example of division into two files Of the original XML document, the key element (name, company) and the non-key element (department, address, telephone) are separated into separate files, that is, the XML document of the key element In the XML document of the key element, a new empty element tag with the tag name “information” is newly created, and the attribute (id) of the empty element tag is used to identify the key element and the non-key element XML document. Associate with XML document. In a separate file, the non-key elements are grouped in the element of the tag name “information”, and the non-key elements are referenced using the attribute (ref) corresponding to the id attribute.

-XML document of key elements
<Roster>
<Personal><name> A-san </ name><company> company A </ company><information id = "1"/></personal>
<Personal><name> B-san </ name><company> company B </ company><information id = "2"/></personal>
</ Roster>
・ XML document of non-key elements
<Roster>
<Information ref = "1"><Department> A Department </ Department><Address> A City </ Address><Telephone> 123 </ Telephone></Information>
<Information ref = "2"><Department> B Department </ Department><Address> B City </ Address><Telephone> 456 </ Telephone></Information>
</ Roster>
[A3] Prior art 3
In the prior art 3, the hierarchy of XML data is designated, and the data in the hierarchy below it is compressed by XML compression software XMLZip. In the database format XML data, a compressed file is created for each record, and the compressed XML data can be partially restored. By allowing the XML document to be decompressed for each record, memory restrictions can be avoided. However, with such a conventional technique 3, when the size (data amount) per record is not large, an effective compression rate cannot be obtained.

  By the way, an XML document which is a typical structured document is called DOM (Document Object Model) and SAX (Simple API for XML) in order to handle the XML document by application software (application). Three standard interfaces (API: Application Programming Interface) are defined. SAX generally has a high processing speed and a small amount of memory used at the time of processing, but performs time-series output and has a feature that it is suitable for simple processing only by referring to data. In contrast, DOM is generally slow in processing speed and uses a large amount of memory during processing. However, since the elements of an XML document are expanded into a hierarchical tree (DOM tree), even for complicated processing contents. It has the feature that it is easy to build a program.

  In general, when an operation such as search / update / deletion is performed on an XML document, the operation target XML document is expanded into a DOM tree using a standard API (DOM), and then the operation is performed. However, when an XML document is expanded to a DOM tree, a large amount of operation memory capacity that is six times the original data amount is required, and items that are not used (items that are not subject to operation) are also expanded together. For this reason, a great deal of time is required for the expansion process.

In other words, the memory usage by the standard API (DOM) is large and the processing speed is slow because, in an application that handles XML documents, all elements including elements that are not subject to data processing are expanded on the memory. . Accordingly, the processing speed and the memory usage increase in proportion to the number of elements of the structured document.
Therefore, the prior arts 1 and 2 as described above have been proposed in order to improve the processing performance for the XML document by processing the XML document in advance.

However, in the technique according to the prior art 1 described above, the same kind of data used for data processing is collected into one tag. However, this technique is applied to specific data having the same kind of data, and the memory usage is reduced. In addition, the improvement effect of increasing the processing speed depends on the data.
Further, in the above-described prior art 2, the key element that is the target of data processing and the element that is not used are divided into separate files. However, if the key element and the non-key element are to be displayed together, the non-key element Must be read from a separate file and combined with the key element, which is very time consuming.

  Therefore, when converting the structure of XML data in advance, it is necessary to consider a general-purpose data structure conversion method so that the conversion method can be applied to various types of XML data. Further, it is necessary to perform conversion so that the converted XML data also has an effective data structure, and it is also necessary to ensure transparency (transparency) to application software. Here, the transparent property means that the application software can use the converted XML document as it is without correcting the conversion target XML document to be processed or only by making a slight correction. . This transparency is an important property when the converted XML document is executed by existing application software.

  On the other hand, in the above-described prior art 3, a compressed file is created for each record of XML data. However, since the compressed file is usually binary data, it can be placed in an XML document consisting only of character codes. Instead, it will be saved as a separate file. Therefore, when it is necessary to refer to a predetermined record in the XML document, it is necessary to read the record from another file and decompress it, which is very troublesome. Therefore, it is desired to develop a compression method capable of efficiently compressing an XML document and placing the compression result in the XML document (that is, the compression result can be obtained in the form of a character code). ing.

  The present invention was devised in view of such problems, and is a data structure conversion that combines non-key elements into one element while ensuring the transparency to the application and the validity of the data structure of the converted structured document. By providing a general-purpose conversion technology that allows processing to be performed on various structured document data, resources required for operations on structured documents are reduced, and memory for processing structured documents The purpose is to achieve both reduction in usage and increase in processing speed.

  In addition, the present invention provides a compression conversion technique that enables a compressed result to be obtained in the form of a character code and placed in the structured document while efficiently compressing the structured document. An object of the present invention is to reduce resources required for operation on a document and to realize both reduction in memory usage and increase in processing speed when processing a structured document.

  In order to achieve the above object, a structured document conversion apparatus according to the present invention is a device having a processing unit for converting a structured document, and the processing unit has a structure for each element constituting the structured document to be converted. The distinction information that is read with the distinction information for distinguishing the key element that is the target of the data processing for the document and the non-key element that is not the target of the data processing, and is given the predetermined tag name and the predetermined attribute name Create a new element for the non-key element in, connect the tag names of the non-key elements via a delimiter, create a tag name string including the tag name of the non-key element, and The new element is described as an attribute value corresponding to the predetermined attribute name, and the contents of the non-key element are created by connecting the contents of the non-key element via a delimiter, and the contents String Described as the contents of the new element, the key element in the compartment-specific information, is characterized in that as it is described in the structured document after conversion (claim 1).

The processing unit reads the conversion specification document describing the distinction information and the tag name of the new element, and based on the conversion specification document, applies the non-key to the structured document to be converted. It is preferable to convert the element description (claim 2).
In order to achieve the above object, the structured document conversion apparatus of the present invention is a device having a processing unit for converting a structured document, and the processing unit is provided for elements constituting the structured document to be converted. The non-key in the distinction information, which is read with the distinction information for distinguishing between the key element which is the object of data processing for the structured document and the non-key element which is not the object of data processing, and is given a predetermined tag name Create a new element for the element, create a character string in which the symbol representing the tag in the description of the non-key element is replaced with an entity reference character string not related to tagging by the entity reference description, and the character string is It is described as the contents of the new element, and the key element in the distinction information is described as it is in the converted structured document (claim 3).

  Furthermore, in order to achieve the above object, a structured document conversion method as a related technique of the present invention divides elements constituting a structured document to be converted into a key element and a non-key element, a predetermined tag name and a predetermined Is created, a tag name character string including the tag name of the non-key element is created, and the tag name character string is associated with the predetermined attribute name in the new element. Perform tag name conversion described as an attribute value, create a content character string including the content of the non-key element, perform content conversion describing the content character string as the content of the new element, and convert the key element to In the structured document after conversion, it is described as it is (without performing any conversion on the key element).

  Also, the structured document conversion method as a related technology of the present invention divides the elements constituting the conversion target structured document into a key element and a non-key element, and creates a new element given a predetermined tag name. A character string in which a symbol related to tagging is replaced with a character string not related to tagging in the description of the non-key element, the character string is described as the content of the new element, and the key element is In the converted structured document, it is described as it is (without performing any conversion on the key element).

  Further, the structured document conversion method as a related technique of the present invention divides the elements constituting the conversion target structured document into a key element and a non-key element, and creates a new element given a predetermined tag name. , Variable length coding is performed by assigning a shorter variable length code to a character or character string that forms the non-key element, and the shorter the variable length code is assigned, the binary data obtained by the variable length coding is converted into 1 byte by 6 bits. The non-key element is converted into a compressed character string composed of the character code by packing the data into 6-bit data and converting the 6-bit data packed in each conversion data into a character code according to the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code. Then, the compressed character string is described as the contents of the new element, and the key element is directly used in the converted structured document (the key element). Is characterized in that no) describe performing any transformation on.

  On the other hand, the data conversion method as a related technique of the present invention performs variable-length coding by assigning a shorter variable-length code to a character or character string to be converted that has a higher appearance frequency, and is obtained by the variable-length coding. The binary data is packed into 1-byte converted data every 6 bits and output. At this time, further, the 6-bit data packed in each conversion data is converted into a character code according to the ASCII code, and the character code obtained for each conversion data is converted into a compression conversion result of the character or character string to be converted. May be output as

  According to the structured document conversion method and the structured document conversion apparatus of the present invention as related techniques of the present invention, the processing unit divides the elements constituting the structured document to be converted into key elements and non-key elements. The distinction information is read, and the structured document to be converted is converted into a structured document in which the key elements are described as they are and the non-key elements are combined into one tag. In this case, the number of elements is reduced, and non-key elements can be handled collectively at the time of expansion or data processing. In particular, the effect of reducing the number of elements in a structured document with many non-key elements that are not subject to data processing or a structured document with a large number of elements in one record is great.

Further, only key elements are used when data processing is performed on a structured document by application software (application). However, in the present invention, the key elements are described as they are, so that the key elements are not changed as usual. The contents of the key element can be referred to using the tag name, and the transparency of the converted structured document is ensured.
At this time, by creating a conversion specification document as a structured document and giving a conversion execution procedure, it is not necessary to create a style sheet for each type of structured document, and the present invention can be performed without trouble. Data structure conversion / inverse conversion processing according to can be applied to various structured document data. Further, if a conversion / inverse style sheet for instructing conversion / inverse conversion is generated based on the conversion specification document, a structured / text conversion style sheet (for example, a standard XSLT processor) is used to use the conversion / inverse style sheet. Conversion / inversion can be performed, that is, conversion / inversion processing according to the present invention can be performed in almost any kind of structured document system (XML document system).

  Therefore, according to the present invention, data structure conversion processing for combining non-key elements into one element while ensuring the transparency to the application and the validity of the data structure of the converted structured document is performed in various structured documents. Provides general-purpose conversion technology that can be applied to data, which significantly reduces the resources required to operate on structured documents and uses memory when processing structured documents Both reduction and an increase in processing speed are realized.

In tag name conversion and content conversion, the tag name character string and content character string are not related to tagging by connecting the tag name and content of non-key elements via a separator such as a comma. Very easy to use.
At this time, if the non-key element has a plurality of hierarchies, the hierarchical structure can be stored in the converted structured document by adding the hierarchical structure identification information to the tag name in the tag name character string. Therefore, reverse conversion for restoring the original structured document can be easily performed in accordance with the hierarchical structure identification information.

  If the non-key element has an attribute, in the tag name character string, the attribute name of the attribute to which attribute name identification information is added is described via a delimiter after the tag name having the attribute. By creating a content string that links the contents of non-key elements in correspondence with the tag names in the string, the attributes of the non-key elements can be saved in the structured document after conversion. According to the identification information, reverse conversion for restoring the original structured document can be easily performed.

By performing the tag name shortening conversion that replaces the tag name of the non-key element with the shortened tag name, the data amount of the structured document after the conversion can be reduced. At this time, whether or not to perform the tag name shortening conversion is instructed by the tag name shortening conversion information in the conversion specification document, and the execution / non-execution of the tag name shortening conversion and the tag name decompression conversion can be automatically switched.
If the conversion target structured document is described in a tabular format, tag names and attribute names can be easily determined when performing reverse conversion to restore the original structured document. Can be omitted. Therefore, in the converted structured document, it is only necessary to describe the content character string of the non-key element, the description relating to the tag name and the attribute name can be omitted, and the data amount of the converted structured document Can be greatly reduced. At this time, whether or not to perform table format conversion is instructed by the table format information in the conversion specification document, and execution / non-execution of table format conversion and table format reverse conversion can be automatically switched.

  Further, according to the structured document conversion method and the structured document conversion apparatus of the present invention as the related technology of the present invention, the processing unit converts the elements constituting the structured document to be converted into a key element and a non-key element. The divided identification information is read and the structured document to be converted describes the key element as it is, while the non-key elements are grouped into one tag and the symbols related to tagging in the description of the non-key element are displayed. Since it is converted into a structured document replaced with a character string not related to tagging, the same effect or advantage as the above-described structured document conversion method can be obtained. At this time, by replacing the symbol representing the tag in the description of the non-key element with the entity reference character string not related to tagging by the entity reference description [for example, when the structured document is an XML document, the tag symbol “<” And by replacing the character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” by entity reference description with “>” respectively, the structured document can be converted very easily.

  Furthermore, according to the structured document conversion method as the related art of the present invention, the elements constituting the structured document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements, and the structured document to be converted is converted to the key element. Is converted into a structured document described as a character code string (compressed character string) obtained by combining the characters or character strings that make up the non-key elements into a single tag and compressing them using the following data compression method. Therefore, the same effect or advantage as the structured document conversion method described above can be obtained, and the data amount of the structured document after conversion can be greatly reduced.

  When compressing a character or character string that forms a non-key element, after performing variable-length encoding, the binary data obtained by this variable-length encoding is packed into 1-byte converted data by 6 bits, By converting the 6-bit data packed in each conversion data into a character code according to the ASCII code, compressed data (compressed character string) described in the character code can be obtained. Thereby, the compressed data can be placed as an element or attribute value of the structured document.

  By using the data compression method as the related art of the present invention as described above, the compression that can obtain the compression result in the form of character code and put it in the structured document while efficiently compressing the structured document. Since the conversion technique is provided, the resources required for the operation on the structured document are greatly reduced, and the amount of memory used and the processing speed are increased when the structured document is processed.

At this time, the ASCII code excluding symbols related to tagging (for example, <,>, &, “,” in the XML document) is used as the character code expressing the compressed data. In the compressed character string, there is no symbol related to tagging, and it is possible to reliably prevent erroneous processing during data processing.
Since the ASCII code is a character code set that is commonly included in various character code systems, even if the converted structured document is subjected to character code system conversion, a compressed character string using the ASCII code is not converted. The bit string formed is kept in its original state without being affected by the conversion of the character code system. Therefore, the compressed character string included in the structured document whose character code system has been converted is correctly restored to the original non-key element.

Furthermore, by adding information indicating the type of the character code system at the time of compression to the compressed character string, it is possible to recognize the character code system type of the data restored from the compressed character string. By matching this with the current character code system of the structured document, the consistency of the character code system of the entire structured document can be maintained.
Prior to converting a non-key element into a compressed character string, the character string that forms the non-key element is replaced with a dictionary number using a static dictionary created in advance, so that the variable length encoding target is changed. Therefore, the compression efficiency can be further increased, and the data amount of the structured document after conversion can be further reduced.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.
When DOM is adopted as a standard API and a structured document is expanded as a DOM tree in memory, in general, the larger the number of elements in the structured document, the longer the expansion process takes, and the longer the tag search takes. become.
In a structured document, a key element that is a target of data processing for the structured document and a non-key element that is not a target of data processing are usually included, and the elements constituting the structured document are key elements. And non-key elements. In other words, when data processing for structured documents is performed by application software (application), only key elements are processed, key elements are searched by tag name, and the contents of the searched key elements are referenced. Is done.

Therefore, in the present invention (first to third embodiments), a structured document to be converted is described as it is without performing any conversion on key elements in one record, and one non-key element is described as one. It is converted into a structured document that is described in tags. Hereinafter, in the present embodiment, a case where the structured document is an XML document will be described.
[1] Description of First Embodiment In the first embodiment of the present invention, for the sake of simplicity, first, a method for converting an XML document in which each record element is one layer will be described. A method for converting an XML document that includes a record that includes the above-described hierarchy and a record that includes an element having an attribute will be described.

[1-1] Principle of Structured Document Conversion Method of First Embodiment Here, referring to FIGS. 1A, 1B, and 3A, as a first embodiment of the present invention. The principle of the structured document conversion method will be described.
The XML document to be converted shown in FIG. 3A has two records (tag name “person”). One record has elements of tag name “name”, “company”, “department”, “address”, and “phone” one by one. The other record has elements of tag names “name”, “company”, and “department” one by one, and two elements of tag name “phone”. Since these two records have different types and numbers of elements, the XML document shown in FIG. 3A is not in a table format. FIG. 1A shows a memory development format of the XML document shown in FIG. FIG. 1A shows an example in which the XML document shown in FIG. 3A is expanded on a memory as a DOM tree.

  In an XML document having the above elements, the tag name “name” and “company” elements are used as key elements, and the tag name “department”, “address”, and “telephone” elements are used as non-key elements. FIG. 1B shows a memory expansion format of the converted XML document obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the first embodiment to the XML document. The development format shown here is a development format on the memory when the application software operates the converted XML document via the standard API (DOM).

  The converted XML document shown in FIG. 1 (B) corresponds to an XML document described later with reference to FIGS. 3 (B) to 3 (D). In FIG. 1 (B), FIG. An example is shown in which the XML document shown in B) to FIG. 3D is expanded as a DOM tree on the memory. In the XML document shown in FIG. 1B, a new element having a tag name “information” is created, and the contents of this new element are non-key elements of the tag name “department”, “address”, and “telephone”. The contents of are described together.

That is, in one record, “A part, A city, 123” is described as the contents of the element of the tag name “information”, and in the other record, “B part, 456, 789 "are described. Further, the key elements of the tag names “name” and “company” are described as they are.
By transforming the XML document so that the non-key elements are combined into one element in this way, the number of elements included in the XML document, that is, the number of child elements of the tree expanded in the memory is greatly reduced. It is possible to handle non-key elements at the same time during expansion and data processing.

[1-2] System of First Embodiment and Flow of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing FIG. 2 shows a system to which the structured document conversion method according to the first embodiment of the present invention is applied, and conversion / inverse conversion in the system. It is a figure for demonstrating the flow of a process.
Creating various style sheets (XSL (XML Style Language) sheets) corresponding to each XML document for various types of XML documents is extremely troublesome and troublesome.

  Therefore, in order to save the effort, in the first embodiment, specifications (record name, key tag name) for converting the data structure of the XML document as will be described later with reference to FIGS. , Non-key tag names, etc.) are created by an XML document (conversion specification document) and given a conversion execution procedure. As will be described later with reference to FIGS. 18 and 19, conversion / reverse of the XML document based on the conversion specification document. Perform the conversion.

  Furthermore, in the first embodiment, as will be described later with reference to FIGS. 20A to 20D, a conversion style sheet for instructing a conversion execution procedure based on a given conversion specification document, and vice versa. A reverse conversion style sheet for instructing the conversion execution procedure is automatically generated, and using this style sheet, a structured document conversion processor (an XSLT (XML Style Language Translator) processor) converts / reverses the data structure of the XML document. The conversion is executed. If the conversion / inverse conversion execution procedure is given in the style sheet as described above, the conversion / inverse conversion can be executed by a standard XSLT processor. Therefore, according to the first embodiment in almost all kinds of XML document systems. Conversion / inverse conversion processing can be executed.

  In the system shown in FIG. 2, a data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 including an XSLT conversion unit 11, an XSLT structure conversion unit 12, and an XSLT reverse conversion unit 13 is provided, and a standard API 20 and application software 30 are provided. . The XSLT converter 11, the XSLT structure converter 12, and the XSLT inverse converter 13 (data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10) are actually realized by one standard XSLT processor (structured document conversion processor). The

The XSLT conversion unit 11 reads the data structure conversion specification (for example, see FIG. 9) given by the XML document and describes the distinction information between the key element and the non-key element, and uses the XML document and the automatic conversion style sheet. A structure conversion style sheet (see, for example, FIG. 10) and a reverse conversion style sheet (see, for example, FIG. 11) are generated.
The XSLT structure conversion unit 12 reads an XML document to be converted (input XML document), and sets a non-key element for each record with respect to the input XML document based on the structure conversion style sheet generated by the XSLT conversion unit 11. Data structure conversion to be combined into one element is performed.

  Both the standard API 20 and the application software (application) 30 are executed by the processor and perform predetermined data processing on the converted XML document from the XSLT structure conversion unit 12. As the processor, an XSLT processor for realizing the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 may be used, or a processor different from the XSLT processor may be used.

  The XSLT reverse conversion unit 13 reads an XML document (extracted XML document, converted XML document) processed by the application software 30 and extracts the extracted XML document based on the reverse conversion style sheet generated by the XSLT conversion unit 11. Is converted to an XML document in the original format (an XML document in which the non-key elements are restored to the original state), and the restoration result is output as an extraction final result.

  In the system configured as described above, the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism (XSLT processor) 10 reads the conversion specification document based on the XML document and also reads the input XML document to be processed, and the conversion specification (actually the structure conversion). The input XML document is converted based on the style sheet, and the XML document subjected to the predetermined data structure conversion is output. The converted XML document is subjected to data processing (for example, tag search) by application software via the standard API 20, and an XML document after data processing is obtained. When a tag search is performed as data processing, the search result is obtained in the form of an extracted XML document. This extracted XML document is read into the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 and is converted back into an XML document having the original data structure based on the conversion specification (actually, the reverse conversion style sheet), and the final data processing is performed. The resulting XML document is obtained.

In the first embodiment, the specification XML document for data structure conversion read by the XSLT conversion unit 11 will be described later with reference to FIGS. 9, 12 to 15 and FIG. Further, the structure conversion style sheet and the reverse conversion style sheet generated by the XSLT conversion unit 11 will be described later with reference to FIGS. 10 and 11, respectively.
[1-3] Conversion method and specific conversion example of non-tabular XML document in the first embodiment When the conversion method of the first embodiment is applied to an XML document (non-tabular XML document) that is not a tabular format, A tag name character string including the tag name of the non-key element and a content character string including the content of the non-key element are created, and these character strings are element contents, tag names, or attribute values in the newly created element. Is described as

At this time, the tag name character string is created by connecting the tag names of a plurality of non-key elements via delimiters, and the content character string is similarly the contents of the plurality of non-key elements via delimiters. Created by connecting. In the first embodiment, a comma “,” is used as a delimiter.
Here, the CSV (Comma Separated Value) format is used as a method of connecting tag names and contents. CSV is originally a method of connecting numerical values and character strings via commas, and delimiters are limited to commas. However, in the present invention, delimiters need not be limited to commas.

  When a comma is used as a delimiter, if the element content is a monetary amount, there is a risk of being confused with a comma representing a thousand digit, so use "@" (at sign) or "_" (underscore) rather than a comma. . In addition, when character strings are connected via a delimiter, if the delimiter is included as a character in the character string, the character may be replaced with an entity reference form. For example, when a comma is used as a delimiter, a comma in a character string is replaced with an entity reference description “&CMM;”. Therefore, if possible, it is desirable to use characters that rarely appear in normal character strings as delimiters. In the present embodiment, a method of connecting numerical values and character strings not only with commas but via delimiters is referred to as CSV for convenience.

3B to 3F, conversion results obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the first embodiment to the XML document that is not in the table format described above with reference to FIG. 3A. The first to fifth specific examples are shown. Again, the elements of the tag names “name” and “company” are used as key elements, and the elements of the tag names “department”, “address”, and “telephone” are used as non-key elements.
In the conversion method of the first embodiment, basically, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements that are subject to data processing for the XML document and non-key elements that are not subject to data processing. A new element is created, and tag name conversion and content conversion are performed for the non-key element, while the key element is described as it is in the converted XML document without any conversion.

  In the first specific example shown in FIG. 3B, after creating a new element with the tag name “information” and the attribute name “tags”, the tag name character for the non-key element is converted by tag name conversion. A column is created in the CSV format, and the tag name character string is described as an attribute value corresponding to the attribute name “tags” in the new element. Further, a content character string for a non-key element is created in CSV format by content conversion, and this content character string is described as the content of a new element.

  That is, in the first record of the converted XML document shown in FIG. 3B, the content character string “A part, A city, 123” is described as the element content in the element of the tag name “information”, and the tag name character The column “department, address, telephone” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”. In the second record, in the element of the tag name “information”, the content character string “B part, 456, 789” is described as the element content, and the tag name character string “department, telephone, telephone” is the attribute name “tags”. "Is described as an attribute value.

  At this time, as will be described later with reference to FIGS. 12 and 14, in the conversion specification document, the tag name of the non-key element is associated with a shortened tag name that is shorter than this tag name and can specify this tag name. It may be described, and at the time of the tag name conversion, tag name shortening conversion may be performed in which the tag name of the non-key element is replaced with the shortened tag name based on the conversion specification document. When restoring an XML document subjected to such tag name shortening conversion to the original state (in reverse conversion), a tag that replaces the shortened tag name with the tag name of the non-key element based on the conversion specification document Perform name expansion conversion.

  In the second specific example shown in FIG. 3C, an XML document obtained as a result of performing the above-described tag name shortening conversion on the XML document shown in FIG. 3B is shown. That is, by associating the tag names “department”, “address”, and “telephone” with the short tag names “A”, “B”, and “C”, respectively, in the conversion specification document (see FIGS. 12 and 14). In the first record, the tag name character string described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags” is replaced with “A, B, C”. Similarly, in the second record, the attribute value of the attribute name “tags” is replaced. Is replaced with “A, C, C”.

  In the third specific example shown in FIG. 3D, a tag name conversion is performed after a new element having a tag name “information”, a first attribute name “tags”, and a second attribute name “contents” is created. Thus, the tag name character string for the non-key element is created in the CSV format, and the tag name character string is described as the first attribute value corresponding to the first attribute name “tags” in the new element. Further, a content character string for the non-key element is created in CSV format by content conversion, and this content character string is described as a second attribute value corresponding to the second attribute name “contents” in the new element. . In this case, the new element is described as an empty element tag.

  That is, in the first record of the converted XML document shown in FIG. 3D, in the element of the tag name “information”, the content character string “A part, A city, 123” is the second attribute name “contents”. Two attribute values are described, and the tag name character string “department, address, telephone” is described as the first attribute value of the first attribute name “tags”. In the second record, in the element of the tag name “information”, the content character string “B part, 456, 789” is described as the second attribute value of the second attribute name “contents”, and the tag name character string “department” , Telephone, telephone "is described as the first attribute value of the first attribute name" tags ". At this time, similar to the second specific example shown in FIG. 3C, the tag name character string described as the first attribute value may be further subjected to the tag name shortening conversion as described above.

In the fourth specific example shown in FIG. 3E, a tag name character string for a non-key element is created in CSV format by tag name conversion, and a new element assigned with the tag name character string as a tag name is created. create. Then, a content character string for the non-key element is created in CSV format by content conversion, and this content character string is described as the content of the new element.
That is, in the first record of the converted XML document shown in FIG. 3E, the content character string “A part, A city, 123” is described as the element content in the element of the tag name “department, address, telephone”. ing. In the second record, the content character string “B section, 456, 789” is described as the element content in the element of the tag name “department, telephone, telephone”.

  In the fifth specific example shown in FIG. 3 (F), an XML document obtained as a result of performing the above-described tag name shortening conversion on the XML document shown in FIG. 3 (E) is shown. That is, by associating the tag names “department”, “address”, and “telephone” with the short tag names “A”, “B”, and “C”, respectively, in the conversion specification document (see FIGS. 12 and 14). In the first record, the tag name character string described as the tag name of the new element is replaced with “A, B, C”. Similarly, in the second record, it is described as the tag name of the new element. The tag name character string is replaced with “A, C, C”.

  In addition, when the method of putting a CSV tag name character string as an attribute value into the start tag of a new element as shown in FIG. 3B is used, the CSV tag name is used as shown in FIG. Compared to the method of using a character string as a tag name for the start tag of a new element, the data amount is reduced by the amount of the end tag being shortened. Instead, when the former method is used, the attribute describing the CSV tag name character string is increased by one. As shown in FIGS. 3C and 3F, the XML document shown in FIGS. 3B and 3E can reduce the amount of data by performing the tag name shortening conversion described above. Can do.

  As described above, in the conversion method of the first embodiment, a plurality of non-key elements are combined into one element, and while the application software is executing data processing, the non-key elements are collectively regarded as elements unrelated to data processing. So that it can be handled. Whether the tag name character string created by connecting the tag name of the non-key element to the CSV format is described as the tag name of the new element or the attribute value of the new element is selected by the conversion specification document, etc. It can be specified. In addition, the content string created by linking element contents of non-key elements in CSV format may be described as a new element attribute value or new element contents. Can be done. Which of the various methods described with reference to FIGS. 3B to 3F is used as the conversion method depends on the data amount of the XML document or how many new elements increase with data processing. As will be determined, any method may be adopted in view of the essence of the present invention in which non-key elements are handled together.

[1-4] Tabular XML Document Conversion Method and Specific Conversion Example in the First Embodiment When the conversion method of the first embodiment is applied to a tabular XML document, content characters including the contents of non-key elements A column is created, and this content character string is described as element content or attribute value in the newly created element. That is, when the conversion method of the first embodiment is applied to a tabular XML document, the element description of each record in the tabular XML document has regularity, so the tag name used in the XML document that is not in the tabular format. Conversion (or attribute name conversion described later) can be omitted.

  However, in this case, as will be described later with reference to FIG. 9, the conversion specification document describes information for distinguishing key elements from non-key elements, and also includes tag names (attributes) of the non-key elements. In this case, the attribute name is also included; see item [1-5]) and the representative tag name (tag name of the new element) representing the tag name or attribute name is described in association with each other. Based on such a conversion specification document, at the time of data structure conversion, table format conversion is performed on the XML document to be converted, omitting the tag name conversion described above and performing only the content conversion described above. On the other hand, at the time of reverse conversion, based on the conversion specification document, the tag name and attribute name of the non-key element are determined from the representative tag name (new element tag name), and the XML document (data processing) subjected to the table format conversion is applied. Table format reverse conversion is performed to return the description of the non-key element to the original state.

Here, a specific conversion result of the tabular XML document will be described with reference to FIGS. 4 (A) to 4 (C).
The XML document to be converted shown in FIG. 4A has two records (tag name “person”). These records all have tag names “name”, “company”, and “department”. , “Address” and “telephone” one by one. That is, in these two records, the type and number of elements are the same, and the XML document shown in FIG. 4A is in a table format.

4B and 4C, conversion results obtained by applying the structured document conversion method according to the first embodiment to the table-format XML document described above with reference to FIG. First and second specific examples are shown. Again, the elements of the tag names “name” and “company” are used as key elements, and the elements of the tag names “department”, “address”, and “telephone” are used as non-key elements.
When the conversion method of the first embodiment is applied to a tabular XML document, as described above, in the conversion specification document, the representative tag name (new element tag name) “information” and the non-key element tag names “department”, “address” ”,“ Telephone ”, the elements that make up the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements that are subject to data processing for the XML document and non-key elements that are not subject to data processing, and new The non-key element is subjected to content conversion, while the key element is described as it is without any conversion in the converted XML document.

In the first specific example shown in FIG. 4B, after creating a new element with a representative tag name “information”, a content character string for a non-key element is created in CSV format by content conversion. This content character string is described as the content of a new element.
That is, in the first record of the converted XML document shown in FIG. 4B, the content character string “A part, A city, 123” is described as the element content in the element of the tag name “information”. In the second record, the content character string “B section, B city, 456” is described as the element content in the element of the tag name “information”. Note that the XML document shown in FIG. 4B is obtained by converting the XML document shown in FIG. 4A according to a conversion specification document described later with reference to FIG.

  In the second specific example shown in FIG. 4C, a new element having a tag name “information” and an attribute name “contents” is created, and then a content character string for a non-key element is converted by content conversion. Created in CSV format, this content character string is described as an attribute value corresponding to the attribute name “contents” in the new element. In this case, the new element is described as an empty element tag.

That is, in the first record of the converted XML document shown in FIG. 4C, in the element of the tag name “information”, the content character string “A part, A city, 123” is used as the attribute value of the attribute name “contents”. Described. In the second record, the content character string “B section, B city, 456” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “contents” in the element of the tag name “information”.
As described above, when the XML document to be converted is described in the table format, the tag name (including the attribute name if it has an attribute) can be easily obtained in the reverse conversion for restoring the original XML document. Since it can be determined, tag name conversion and attribute name conversion (this attribute name conversion will be described later with reference to FIGS. 5 to 8) can be omitted. Therefore, when a tabular XML document is converted, it is only necessary to describe the content character string of the non-key element in the converted XML document, and the description relating to the tag name and attribute name can be omitted.

[1-5] Conversion method and specific conversion example of XML document having hierarchical structure and attributes in the first embodiment Up to now, the non-key elements in each record have a single hierarchy and no attributes Although the case has been described, the conversion method of the first embodiment is applied by extending the above-described principle even when the non-key element has a plurality of hierarchies (when the hierarchies become deeper) or has attributes. Is done.

When the non-key element has a plurality of hierarchies, in the conversion method of the first embodiment, in the tag name character string obtained by the tag name conversion, the tag name of the non-key element having a plurality of hierarchies is changed to the non-key element. Hierarchical structure identification information (symbol or character string; see FIGS. 6 to 8) indicating that the element has a plurality of hierarchies is added.
When the non-key element has an attribute, in the conversion method of the first embodiment, the attribute name identification information (symbol; for example, “@” indicating that the character string is an attribute name is added to the character string of the attribute name. ; See FIGS. 6 to 8). Then, in the tag name character string obtained by the tag name conversion, the attribute name to which the attribute name identification information is added as described above via the delimiter (for example, a comma) after the tag name of the non-key element having the attribute. Describe. In the content character string obtained by the content conversion, the attribute value of the attribute is described via a delimiter (for example, a comma) after the content of the non-key element having the attribute.

  As a result, the attribute value is described in the content character string at a position corresponding to the description position of the attribute name in the tag name character string. That is, the tag name character string and the content in which the tag name and attribute name of the non-key element and the element content and attribute content (attribute value) of the non-key element are connected in the CSV format while maintaining a one-to-one correspondence. A character string is created and described in the XML document.

  In the case of a tabular XML document having the same type and number of elements for each record and the non-key element has an attribute, the tag name and attribute name of the non-key element and the tag name and attribute A conversion specification document in which a representative tag name representing a name (a tag name of a new element) is associated is created. In the content character string in the new element in the converted XML document, the element content and the attribute content (attribute value) are described in an order corresponding to the description order of the tag name and the attribute name in the conversion specification document.

Here, a specific conversion result of an XML document having a hierarchical structure and attributes will be described with reference to FIGS.
The XML to be converted shown in FIG. 5 has two records (tag name “person”), and these records all have tag names “name”, “business”, “address”, and “contact”. It has one “first” element. The element of the tag name “work” has a hierarchical structure with elements of the tag names “company” and “department”, and the element of the tag name “department” has an attribute name “service”. Has attributes. The first record has only one element of the tag name “department”, whereas the second record has two elements of the tag name “department”. The element of the tag name “contact” has a hierarchical structure including elements of the tag names “phone”, “Fax”, and “Email”.

  FIGS. 6 to 8 show first to third specific examples of conversion results obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the first embodiment to the XML document described above with reference to FIG. . Again, the elements of tag names “name” and “company” are key elements, and the other elements are non-key elements. However, since the element of the tag name “workplace” has a hierarchical structure including the element of the tag name “company”, the element of the tag name “workplace” is handled as a key element.

In the first specific example shown in FIG. 6, for each record, a first new element having a tag name “information 1” and an attribute name “tags” is created in the element of the tag name “workplace”. At the same time, a second new element having the tag name “information 2” and the attribute name “tags” is created in the same hierarchy as the elements of the tag name “name” and the tag name “workplace”.
In the element of the tag name “information 1” of the first record, the tag name character string “department, @ employee” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and the content character string “part A, supervisor” It is described as element content. In addition, in the element of the tag name “information 2” of the first record, the tag name character string “address, 0 contact, 1 telephone, 1 fax, 1 email” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and the content character The column “A city, 123, 321, a1-a2@a-sya.co.jp” is described as the element content.

  Similarly, in the element of the tag name “information 1” of the second record, the tag name character string “department, @work, department, @work” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and the content character string “ "B-1 part, supervisor, B-2 part, concurrent part" is described as element content. In the element of the tag name “information 2” of the second record, the tag name character string “address, 0 contact, 1 telephone, 1 fax, 1 email” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and the content character The column “B city, 456, 654, b1-b2@b-sya.co.jp” is described as the element content.

  Here, “@” added to the head of “service” is attribute name identification information, and is information indicating that this “service” is an attribute name. Also, “0” added to the beginning of “Contact” and “1” added to the beginning of “Phone”, “Fax”, “Email” are hierarchical structure identification information, and “1” is added. This indicates that the element of the tag name is a lower layer (element included in the element contents) of the element of the tag name to which “0” is added.

  The XML document shown in FIG. 6 is obtained by converting the XML document shown in FIG. 5 according to a conversion specification document described later with reference to FIG. In particular, the XML document shown in FIG. 6 is obtained by setting “nontable” (not in table format) as the table information of “information 1” and “information 2” in the conversion specification document shown in FIG. Is. That is, in the example shown in FIG. 6, the elements of the tag names “address” and “contact” can be handled as a table because the type and number of elements for each record are the same. By setting “nontable” as the tabular information, the elements of the tag name “address” and “contact” are handled as not in tabular format.

In the second specific example shown in FIG. 7 as well, the tag name “information 1” and the attribute name “tags” are assigned to each record in the element of the tag name “workplace” as in the example shown in FIG. In addition, the first new element is created, and the tag name “information 2” and the attribute name “tags” are assigned to the same hierarchy as the element of the tag name “name” and the tag name “work”. A new element is created.
Also, in the element of the tag name “information 1” of the first record, the tag name character string “department, @work” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, as in the example shown in FIG. The character string “Part A, competent” is described as the element content. However, in the second specific example shown in FIG. 7, the tag name character string “address, contact / phone, contact / fax, contact / Email” is included in the element of the tag name “information 2” of the first record. It is described as an attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and a content character string “A city, 123, 321, a1-a2@a-sya.co.jp” is described as element content.

  Similarly, in the element of the tag name “information 1” of the second record, the tag name character string “department, @work, department, @work” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and the content character string “ "B-1 part, supervisor, B-2 part, concurrent part" is described as element content. In addition, in the element of the tag name “information 2” of the second record, the tag name character string “address, contact / phone, contact / fax, contact / Email” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”. The content character string “B city, 456, 654, b1-b2@b-sya.co.jp” is described as the element content.

Here, the character string “Contact /” added to the head of “Telephone”, “Fax”, “Email” is hierarchical structure identification information, and the tag name element with the character string “Contact /” Indicates a lower hierarchy (element included in the element contents) of the element of the tag name “contact”. This hierarchical position notation is known as XPath.
The XML document shown in FIG. 7 is obtained by converting the XML document shown in FIG. 5 according to a conversion specification document described later with reference to FIG. In particular, the XML document shown in FIG. 7 is obtained by setting “nontable” (not in tabular form) as the table information of “information 1” and “information 2” in the conversion specification document shown in FIG. Is. That is, even in the example shown in FIG. 7, the elements of the tag names “address” and “contact” can be handled as a table format, but by setting “nontable” as the table format information, The elements of “address” and “contact” are treated as non-tabular.

In the third specific example shown in FIG. 8, for each record, a first new element having a tag name “information 1” and an attribute name “tags” is created in the element of the tag name “workplace”. At the same time, a second new element to which the tag name “information 2” is assigned is created in the same hierarchy as the elements of the tag name “name” and the tag name “workplace”.
In the element of the tag name “information 1” of the first record, the tag name character string “department, @ employee” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and the content character string “part A, supervisor” It is described as element content. Further, by handling the elements of the tag name “address” and “contact” as a table format, the content character string “A city, 123, 321, a1- “a2@a-sya.co.jp” is described as the element content.

  Similarly, in the element of the tag name “information 1” of the second record, the tag name character string “department, @work, department, @work” is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “tags”, and the content character string “ "B-1 part, supervisor, B-2 part, concurrent part" is described as element content. In the element of the tag name “information 2” of the second record, the content character string “B city, 456, 654, b1-b2@b-sya.co.jp” is described as the element content.

  The XML document shown in FIG. 8 is obtained by converting the XML document shown in FIG. 5 in accordance with a conversion specification document described later with reference to FIG. 15 or FIG. In particular, the XML document shown in FIG. 8 sets “nontable” (not a table format) as the table format information of “information 1” in the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 15 or FIG. This is obtained by setting “table” (indicating that the information is in a table format) as information.

In any of the XML documents in FIGS. 6 to 8, the key elements are naturally described as they are without any conversion.
[1-6] Specific Example of Conversion Specification Document and Style Sheet of First Embodiment [1-6-1] Conversion Specification Document and Style Sheet for Tabular Data FIG. 9 shows FIG. A specific conversion specification document (XML document) when the table format XML document is to be converted is shown.

  In the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 9, the tag name “name list” of the root and the tag name “person” of the record are described, and the tag name “name” of the key element is included as the contents of the element of the tag name “key_tags”. Distinguish between key elements and non-key elements by describing "company" and the tag name "department", "address", and "phone" of the non-key element as the contents of the element of the tag name "nonkey_tags" Information for this is described. In addition, the content of the element of the tag name “nonkey_tags” includes the element of the tag name “merged_tag”. As the content of this element, the tag name of a new element for combining the non-key elements into one ( (Representative tag name) "information" is described. Such a conversion specification document instructs the data structure conversion execution procedure of the XML document.

  Then, the XSLT conversion unit 11 shown in FIG. 2 reads the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 9 and uses the conversion specification document and the automatic conversion style sheet (automatic conversion XSL sheet; not shown) for structure conversion shown in FIG. A style sheet (XSL sheet) and a reverse conversion style sheet (XSL sheet) shown in FIG. 11 are generated. The style sheet for structure conversion shown in FIG. 10 is read by the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 and used to perform data structure conversion on the XML document to be converted (input XML document). Also, the reverse conversion style sheet shown in FIG. 11 is an XML document (original XML document (extracted XML document, converted XML document)) that is read by the XSLT reverse conversion unit 13 and processed by the application software 30. This is used to restore a non-key element to an XML document that has been returned to its original state.

  When the XML document to be converted is tabular data as described above, the tag name of the non-key element is associated with the tag name (representative tag name) of the new element by the conversion / reverse conversion style sheet. It will not appear in later XML documents. Thereby, the data amount of the converted XML document can be greatly reduced. In other words, if both the conversion specification document and the automatic conversion style sheet are prepared, or the structure conversion / reverse conversion style sheet is prepared, the tag name of the non-key element is the basic in the converted XML document. Unnecessary. If there is no style sheet as described above, even if it is a tabular XML document, if it is handled as a non-tabular format, it is possible to restore the original XML document based on the regularity of the arrangement of elements. It is.

[1-6-2] Conversion Specification Document for Performing Tag Name Short Conversion FIG. 12 shows a specific conversion specification document (XML document) for performing tag name short conversion in the first embodiment. ing. In the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 12, the tag names “Department”, “Address”, and “Telephone” of the non-key elements in the XML document to be converted are shown in the converted XML document as shown in FIG. Tag name “department”, “address”, “telephone” and abbreviated tag names “A”, “B” to perform tag name abbreviated conversion to replace with the abbreviated tag names “A”, “B”, “C” respectively. , “C” is described. At this time, the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 12 has the same description as the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 9, but in the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 12, the short tag name is the tag name “nonkey_tags”. The tag name of each key element is described in association with the “abbr” attribute.

[1-6-3] Conversion specification document for designating table format / non-table format FIG. 13 shows a conversion having a function of designating a data format (whether it is a table format) in the first embodiment. A specific example of a specification document (XML document) is shown. The conversion specification document shown in FIG. 13 describes table format information indicating whether or not the XML document (non-key element) to be converted is described in a table format. That is, in the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 13, the same description as the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 9 is made. However, in the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 13, the table format information includes the tag name “merged_tag”. It is added as “format” attribute in the element. For example, “table” is described as the “format” attribute value when the table format is specified, while “nontable” is described as the “format” attribute value when the non-table format is specified.

  If “table” is described as the “format” attribute value of the conversion specification document, the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 shown in FIG. 2 performs conversion processing corresponding to the table format (processing for performing only content conversion while omitting tag name conversion). 2) and the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 shown in FIG. 2 performs inverse transform corresponding to the table format. Conversely, if “nontable” is described as the “format” attribute value of the conversion specification document, the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 shown in FIG. 2 performs conversion processing (tag name conversion and content conversion) corresponding to the non-table format. 2 is executed, and the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 shown in FIG. 2 performs inverse transform corresponding to the non-table format.

  Therefore, the end user can specify whether or not the XML document to be converted is in the table format using the “format” attribute in the conversion specification document described in XML, and the “format” attribute can be used to specify the table format. Whether conversion is to be performed, that is, whether to perform tabular conversion or non-tabular conversion is instructed, and automatic switching between execution / non-execution of tabular conversion and tabular conversion, that is, tabular conversion / Automatic switching between reverse conversion and non-tabular conversion / inverse conversion can be performed.

Note that the “format” attribute as the table format information as described above corresponds to the table format data in the XSLT conversion unit 11 shown in FIG. 2 as will be described later with reference to FIGS. 21 (A) and 21 (B). This is referred to when determining whether to create a structure conversion / inverse conversion style sheet or a structure conversion / inverse conversion style sheet corresponding to non-tabular data.
Further, when a table format portion and a non-table format portion are mixed in one XML document to be converted, for example, as shown in FIGS. 15 and 17, “format” in each element of the tag name “merged_tag”. By specifying the table format information by attribute, for example, as shown in FIG. 8, the table format portion is subjected to the table format conversion, and the non-table format portion is subjected to the non-table format conversion. You can also

[1-6-4] Conversion Specification Document for Specifying Execution / Non-execution of Short Conversion FIG. 14 shows a function for specifying a data format (whether or not to perform short tag name conversion) in the first embodiment. A specific example of a conversion specification document (XML document) having “” is shown. In the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 14, tag name shortening conversion information indicating whether or not to perform tag name shortening conversion at the time of conversion is described. In other words, the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 14 has almost the same description as the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 12. However, in the conversion specification document shown in FIG. It is added as a “format” attribute in the “merged_tag” element. When executing the tag name shortening conversion, for example, “abbr” is described as the “format” attribute value.

If the tag name and the short tag name are associated with each other in the conversion specification document and “abbr” is described as the “format” attribute value, the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 shown in FIG. 2 is executed, and the XSLT inverse conversion unit 13 shown in FIG. 2 executes a tag name expansion conversion process.
Therefore, the end user can specify whether or not to perform the tag name shortening conversion using the “format” attribute in the conversion specification document described in XML. In addition, execution / non-execution of tag name expansion conversion can be automatically switched.

[1-6-5] Conversion Specification Document for XML Document with Hierarchical Structure and Attributes FIG. 15 shows a case where non-key elements in a record have a hierarchical structure and attributes in the first embodiment. A first specific example of a conversion specification document (XML document) is shown. In particular, the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 15 is for converting the XML document shown in FIG. 5 into the XML document shown in FIG. 6 or FIG. is there. Here, the hierarchical structure of the element is described using the attribute “depth”, and the attribute “depth” is also attached to a parent tag having a child.

The procedure for creating the conversion specification document as shown in FIG. 15 will be described according to the flowchart (steps S1 to S4) shown in FIG. However, the procedure illustrated in FIG. 16 is a procedure for creating a conversion specification when the number of hierarchies in a record is arbitrary and a non-key element has an arbitrary attribute.
First, the root and the tag name of the record are specified by the element “structure” (step S1). For example, when the XML document shown in FIG. 5 is to be converted, “name list” is designated as the tag name of the root, and “person” is designated as the tag name of the record.

Further, the elements in the record are divided into two groups of key elements and non-key elements (step S2). In the example shown in FIG. 5 and FIG. 16, the tag names “name”, “last name”, “first name”, “work” and “company” are used as key elements, and the tag names “department”, “address”, “ The “Contact”, “Telephone”, “Fax” and “Email” elements are non-key elements.
Then, the tag name of the key element is specified at the position of <tag> in <key_tags> (step S3), and the tag name of the non-key element is specified at the position of <tag> in <nonkey_tags> ( Step S4).

In step S4, information on non-key elements is described as a conversion specification document according to the following procedures (1) to (4).
Procedure (1): A tag name of a new element describing non-key elements grouped together is designated by <merged_tag> (see “Information 1” and “Information 2” in FIG. 15).
Step (2): Specify whether or not the non-key elements that should be combined into one are tabular data using the “format” attribute. In the case of tabular data, “table” is described as the “format” attribute value, while in the case of non-tabular data, “nontable” is described as the “format” attribute value. Also, in the case of non-tabular data, when performing tag name abbreviated conversion in which a tag name is replaced with a short tag name, this is designated by the “format” attribute. When tag name shortening conversion is performed, “abbr” is described as the “format” attribute value.

Step (3): Tag names, element contents, attributes, and attribute contents (attribute values) are sequentially written in a predetermined order and connected in CSV format.
Step (4): For the elements of two or more layers (elements having a hierarchical structure), the depth is designated by the “depth” attribute (see “depth =“ 0 ”” and “depth =“ 1 ”” in FIG. 15). .
Through the above procedure, the conversion specification document is described in XML as shown in FIG.

  On the other hand, FIG. 17 shows a second specific example of the conversion specification document (XML document) when the non-key elements in the record have a hierarchical structure and have attributes in the first embodiment. In particular, the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 17 is for converting the XML document shown in FIG. 5 into the XML document shown in FIG. 7 or FIG. is there. Here, the hierarchical structure of the elements to be leaves is described using the attribute “path”. The “path” attribute value is expressed by “XPath”.

As described above, the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 17 is the same as the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 15 except that the hierarchical structure is described using the attribute “path”. . Also, the conversion specification document as shown in FIG. 17 is created by the same procedure as that described with reference to FIG.
As described above, the XML document shown in FIGS. 6 and 7 is converted using the conversion specification document shown in FIGS. 15 and 17, and “nontable” is set as the “format” attribute value. It is converted without distinguishing whether the XML document to be converted is tabular data (that is, as non-tabular data). On the other hand, in the XML document shown in FIG. 8, “nontable” is set as the “format” attribute value of “information 1” and “table” is set as the “format” attribute value of “information 2”. The non-key elements of the format data are subjected to table format conversion, and the non-key elements of the non-tabular data are subjected to non-table format conversion.

[1-7] Specific Conversion Processing Procedure by the Conversion Method of the First Embodiment Next, the conversion processing procedure by the structured document conversion method as the first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. Will be described.
FIG. 18 and FIG. 19 show processing procedures when the data structure conversion / inverse conversion processing is executed using Java software using DOM, XSLT, and the like. Java is an object-oriented programming language similar to C ++ developed by Sun Microsystems.

  Here, FIG. 18 is a flowchart (steps A1 to A16) for explaining the processing procedure when data structure conversion is performed on the conversion target XML document based on the conversion specification document, and FIG. 19 shows the conversion specification. It is a flowchart (step B1-B15) for demonstrating the process sequence at the time of performing reverse conversion of a data structure with respect to the XML document after conversion (processed XML document) based on a document. The processing procedure shown in FIG. 18 and FIG. 19 executes processing on the conversion target XML document and the converted XML document based on the conversion specification document without using the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 as shown in FIG. It is a processing procedure at the time of doing.

When performing data structure conversion on the conversion target XML document, as shown in FIG. 18, the processor first reads the conversion specification document and analyzes the conversion specification from the description of the conversion specification document. (Step A1), an XML document to be converted is read, and data structure conversion processing is started (Step A2).
First, after copying the root tag of the conversion target XML document to the converted XML document side (step A3), the next record data is cut out from the conversion target XML document (step A4). Thereafter, it is determined whether or not processing has been performed for all records (step A5). If processing for all records has not yet been completed (NO route of step A5), the tag of the next record is converted. The data is then copied to the XML document side (step A6), and the next element data is cut out from the record currently being processed (step A7).

  If the next element data is cut out, it is determined that processing for all the elements has not been completed yet (NO route of step A8), and whether or not the cut out element is a key element is determined. Judgment is made (step A9). If it is a key element (YES route in step A9), the extracted element is copied as it is to the XML document side after conversion (step A10), and the process returns to step A7.

If the extracted element is not a key element (NO route of step A9), it is determined whether or not the element is a non-key element (step A11). If it is not a non-key element (NO route of step A11), some error processing is executed.
On the other hand, if it is a non-key element (YES route in step A11), a new element having a tag name specified in advance by the conversion specification document is created (step A12). If a new element corresponding to a non-key element has already been created, this creation process is omitted.

When a new element is created in step A12, the tag name of the non-key element is described as a tag name character string (attribute value) in the attribute of the new element. When a new element corresponding to a non-key element has already been created, the tag name of the non-key element is connected in the CSV format, that is, via a delimiter after the tag name character string in the attribute of the new element ( Step A13).
When a new element is created in step A12, the content of the non-key element is described as a content character string in the content of the new element. If a new element corresponding to a non-key element has already been created, the contents of the non-key element are connected in CSV format, that is, via a delimiter after the content character string in the element of the new element (step A14). ). Thereafter, the process returns to step A7. In step A14, when the same character as the delimiter (here, comma “,”) appears in the content of the non-key element, as described above, the character (delimiter) in the content of the non-key element is Replace with another identification character string (for example, entity reference description).

  If the next element data is not cut out in step A7, it is determined that the processing for all elements has been completed (YES route in step A8), the end tag of the record currently being processed is output, and the converted XML After copying to the document side (step A15), the process returns to step A4. When processing for all records is completed (YES route in step A5), a route end tag is output and copied to the XML document side after conversion (step A16), and the conversion processing ends.

On the other hand, when performing reverse conversion of the data structure on the converted XML document, first, as shown in FIG. 19, the processor reads the conversion specification document and converts the conversion specification document from the conversion specification document description. Is analyzed (step B1), the reverse conversion target XML document is read, and the reverse conversion processing of the data structure is started (step B2).
First, the root tag of the reverse conversion target XML document is copied to the restored XML document (step B3), and then the next record data is cut out from the reverse conversion target XML document (step B4). Thereafter, it is determined whether or not processing has been performed for all records (step B5). If processing for all records has not yet been completed (NO route of step B5), the tag of the record is restored XML. Copy to the document side (step B6) and cut out the next element data from the record currently being processed (step B7).

  If the next element data is cut out, it is determined that the processing for all the elements has not been completed yet (NO route of step B8), and whether or not the cut out element is a key element is determined. Judgment is made (step B9). If it is a key element (YES route in step B9), the extracted element is copied to the restored XML document as it is (step B10), and the process returns to step B7.

If the extracted element is not a key element (NO route of Step B9), it is determined whether or not the element is a combination (merged) of non-key elements (Step B11). If the non-key elements are not collected (NO route of step B11), some error processing is executed.
On the other hand, when the new element that summarizes the non-key elements is cut out (YES route of Step B11), the tag character string described as the attribute value in the tag of the new element (the tag name of the non-key element in the CSV format) The tag names of the non-key elements are sequentially cut out from the connected ones (step B12).

  Also, the content of the non-key element is sequentially cut out from the content character string described in the content of the new element (the content of the non-key element is connected in CSV format), and the cut content and the cut-out content are cut out in step B12. After restoring the non-key element from the tag name (step B13), the process returns to step B7. In step B13, when the content including the identification character string for the delimiter is extracted from the content character string in the new element, the identification character string is returned to the original delimiter.

  If the next element data is not cut out in step B7, it is determined that the processing for all the elements has been completed (YES route in step B8), and the end tag of the record currently being processed is output and the restored XML document After copying to the side (step B14), the process returns to step B4. If the processing for all the records is completed (YES route in step B5), the end tag of the route is output and copied to the restored XML document side (step B15), and the inverse conversion process is terminated.

  20A to 20D show a processing procedure when the data structure conversion / inverse conversion processing according to the first embodiment is executed only by the XSLT processor. That is, the processing procedure shown in FIGS. 20A to 20D uses the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 shown in FIG. 2 and based on the conversion specification document, the conversion target XML document and the converted XML document. This is a processing procedure when executing processing on a document.

Here, FIGS. 20A and 20B are diagrams for explaining the procedure for creating the conversion style sheet and the reverse conversion style sheet (processing in the XSLT conversion unit 11) in the first embodiment, respectively. It is a flowchart.
FIG. 20C is a flowchart for explaining a processing procedure when the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 performs data structure conversion on the conversion target XML document based on the structure conversion style sheet. (D) is a flowchart for explaining a processing procedure when the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 performs inverse transform of the data structure on the converted XML document (processed XML document) based on the inverse transform style sheet. is there.

  Prior to performing the processing on the conversion target XML document, first, as shown in FIG. 20A, the XSLT conversion unit 11 reads the conversion specification document described in XML, and from the description of the conversion specification document. After analyzing the conversion specifications (step A1), a data structure conversion style sheet is created using the conversion specifications and the automatic conversion style sheet (step A20). Similarly, as shown in FIG. 20B, the XSLT conversion unit 11 reads a conversion specification document described in XML and analyzes the conversion specification from the description of the conversion specification document (step B1). The data structure reverse conversion style sheet is created using the conversion specification and the automatic conversion style sheet (step B20).

When the data structure conversion is performed on the conversion target XML document, the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 specifies the conversion target XML document and the structure conversion style sheet, as shown in FIG. Then, the conversion process is started (step A21). Thereafter, the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 performs the same processing as steps A2 to A16 in FIG.
On the other hand, when the data structure is inversely converted with respect to the converted XML document, as shown in FIG. Is designated and the inverse conversion process is started (step B21). Thereafter, the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 executes the same processing as steps B2 to B15 in FIG.

Here, as shown in FIG. 2, the application software 30 performs processing such as tag search on the converted XML document from the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 through the standard API (DOM) 20 with the number of elements reduced. Therefore, the processing speed of the application software 30 is greatly increased.
When the application software 30 performs a tag search on the converted XML document, an XML document (extracted XML document) describing a record hit by the tag search is extracted and output. This extracted XML document is inversely transformed by the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 as described above, and a search result (XML document) is obtained which is exactly the same as the application software 30 has searched for the tag of the original XML document. Become.

  At this time, since the XML document to which the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 performs the inverse transform is an XML document in which a small number of records extracted by the application software 30 are described, the overhead of the inverse transform by the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 is Almost no problem. Therefore, the processing executed many times by the application software 30 is greatly speeded up by performing the data structure conversion of this embodiment in advance, and the amount of operation memory used is also greatly reduced. become.

  FIGS. 21A and 21B illustrate a modification of the conversion style sheet and reverse conversion style sheet creation procedure (processing in the XSLT conversion unit 11) in the first embodiment, respectively. It is a flowchart for. The processing procedures shown in FIGS. 21A and 21B are performed in the table format / non-table format according to the “format” attribute value (table format information) in the conversion specification document shown in FIGS. Is specified in the XSLT conversion unit 11 instead of the processing procedure described above with reference to FIGS. 20 (A) and 20 (B).

  That is, prior to performing the processing on the conversion target XML document, first, as shown in FIG. 21A, the XSLT conversion unit 11 reads the conversion specification document described in XML, After the conversion specification is analyzed from the description (step A1), it is determined by referring to the “format” attribute value whether the data (conversion target XML document) is in a table format (step A22).

  When the data is in a table format (YES route in step A22), the XSLT conversion unit 11 uses the conversion specification and the automatic conversion style sheet to convert the non-key element tag name with the new element tag name. A style sheet is created (step A20-1). On the other hand, in the case of non-table format (NO route of step A22), the XSLT conversion unit 11 uses the conversion specification and the automatic conversion style sheet, and the tag name (or short tag name) of the non-key element via the delimiter. A structure conversion style sheet is created that allows the tag name character string connecting the two to be described in the converted XML document (step A20-2).

Further, as shown in FIG. 21B, the XSLT conversion unit 11 reads a conversion specification document described in XML, analyzes the conversion specification from the description of the conversion specification document (step B1), “ With reference to the “format” attribute value, it is determined whether or not the data (the XML document to be converted) is in a tabular format (step B22).
When the data is in a table format (YES route of step B22), the XSLT conversion unit 11 can calculate the tag name of the non-key element from the tag name of the new element using the conversion specification and the automatic conversion style sheet. An inverse conversion style sheet is created (step B20-1). On the other hand, in the case of the non-table format (NO route of step B22), the XSLT conversion unit 11 uses the conversion specification and the automatic conversion style sheet to convert the tag name of the non-key element from the tag name character string. A style sheet is created (step A20-2).

[1-8] Effects of First Embodiment As described above, according to the structured document conversion method as the first embodiment of the present invention, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are converted into key elements and non-key elements. The structured document to be converted is converted into an XML document in which the non-key elements (items not subject to data processing) are described in one tag while the key elements are described as they are. In the later XML document, the number of elements is greatly reduced, and non-key elements can be handled in a lump at the time of expansion into a DOM tree or data processing such as tag search.

  In particular, the effect of reducing the number of elements in an XML document having many non-key elements that are not subject to data processing or an XML document having a large number of elements in one record is large. And the time required for tag search can be cut in half. If the XML document to be converted is tabular data, the tag name of the non-key element is changed by converting the XML document as described with reference to FIGS. 4B and 4C. Since it is not necessary to describe in the converted XML document, the data amount of the XML document after conversion may be reduced to about one third of the data amount of the XML document before conversion.

Only key elements are used when the application software (application) 30 performs data processing on the XML document. However, in the first embodiment, the key elements are described as they are. The content of the key element can be referred to using the tag name of the element, and the transparency of the converted EML document is ensured.
At this time, by creating a conversion specification document as an XML document and giving a conversion execution procedure, it is not necessary to create style sheets for various types of XML documents one by one. Data structure conversion / inverse conversion processing can be applied to various XML document data. Furthermore, if a conversion / inverse style sheet for instructing conversion / inverse conversion is generated based on the conversion specification document, the conversion / inverse conversion style sheet is executed by the standard XSLT processor. In other words, the conversion / inverse conversion process according to the first embodiment can be executed in almost any kind of XML system.

  Therefore, according to the conversion method of the first embodiment, various data structure conversion processes that combine non-key elements into one element while ensuring the transparency to the application and the validity of the data structure of the converted XML document are performed in various ways. Can provide a general-purpose conversion technique that can be applied to XML document data, and this greatly reduces the resources required for operations on XML documents, and uses memory when processing XML documents. Both volume reduction and processing speed increase are realized.

  In addition, in EDI data, there are hundreds to thousands of items (elements) per record, and the number of items is too large, so it is not suitable for expansion into a DOM tree. Further, since a standard API (SAX: Simple API for XML) that only cuts out document elements and flows them in time series is used, complicated document operations are difficult. However, even with data having a large number of items, the number of items (key elements) to be subjected to data processing is not necessarily large, so that it is very effective to convert an XML document by the conversion method of the first embodiment. is there.

In tag name conversion and content conversion, as shown in FIG. 3 to FIG. 8, tag name character strings and contents are connected by connecting tag names and contents of non-key elements (in CSV format) via a separator such as a comma. Content strings are very easily created using symbols that are not relevant to tagging.
At this time, when the non-key element has a plurality of hierarchies, as shown in FIGS. 6 and 7, if the hierarchical structure identification information is added to the tag name in the tag name character string, the hierarchical structure is converted Therefore, reverse conversion for restoring the original XML document can be easily performed according to the hierarchical structure identification information.

  When the non-key element has an attribute, as shown in FIGS. 6 to 8, in the tag name character string, after the tag name having the attribute, the attribute name identification information (FIG. 6 to FIG. 8 describes the attribute name of the attribute to which "@") is added, and creates a content string that links the contents of the non-key elements in correspondence with the tag names in this tag name string. Since element attributes can be stored in the converted XML document, reverse conversion for restoring the original XML document can be easily performed according to the attribute name identification information.

  Further, as shown in FIGS. 3C and 3F, by performing tag name shortening conversion that replaces the tag name of the non-key element with the shortened tag name, the data amount of the structured document after conversion is reduced. Can be reduced. At this time, as shown in FIG. 14, it is instructed whether or not to perform the tag name shortening conversion by the tag name shortening conversion information (“abbr” of the “format” attribute value) in the conversion specification document. Execution / non-execution of decompression conversion can be automatically switched.

  When the XML document to be converted is described in the table format, as described above, the tag name and attribute name can be easily determined at the time of reverse conversion for restoring the original XML document. Name translation can be omitted. Therefore, in the converted XML document, it is only necessary to describe the content character string of the non-key element, the description relating to the tag name and the attribute name can be omitted, and the data amount of the converted XML document is greatly increased. Can be reduced. At this time, as shown in FIG. 13, FIG. 15 or FIG. 17, the table format information (“table / nontable” of the “format” attribute value) in the conversion specification document is used to instruct whether or not to perform the table format conversion. Execution / non-execution of conversion and tabular reverse conversion can be automatically switched.

[2] Description of Second Embodiment [2-1] Principle of Structured Document Conversion Method of Second Embodiment Referring to FIGS. 1 (A), 3 (A), and FIG. The principle of the structured document conversion method as an embodiment will be described.
In the XML document described above with reference to FIGS. 1A and 3A, the tag name “name” and “company” elements are used as key elements, and the tag name “department”, “address”, and “telephone” elements. Is a non-key element, and FIG. 22 shows a memory development format of the converted XML document obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the second embodiment to the XML document. The development format shown here is a development format on the memory when the application software operates the converted XML document via the standard API (DOM).

  In the XML document shown in FIG. 22, a new element having a tag name “information” is created, and the non-key elements of the tag name “department”, “address”, and “phone” are described as the contents of the new element. Has been. However, when the non-key element is described as the content of a new element, the tag symbols “<” and “>” in the non-key element description are replaced with the entity reference description. Further, the key elements of the tag names “name” and “company” are described as they are. In FIG. 22, the element content of the new element “information” is described only at the beginning.

In this way, by converting the XML document so that the non-key elements are combined into one element for each record, the number of elements included in the XML document, that is, the number of child elements of the tree expanded in the memory is obtained. It can be greatly reduced, and non-key elements can be handled collectively at the time of expansion or data processing.
Here, when combining non-key elements into one element for each record, in the second embodiment, a character string in which a symbol related to tagging is replaced with a character string not related to tagging in the description of the non-key element is used. The character string is created and the new element content (see FIG. 22 and FIG. 23), the new element attribute value (see FIG. 24), the parent element attribute value (see FIG. 25), or the parent element content ( (See FIG. 26). FIG. 22 for explaining the principle of the conversion method of the second embodiment shows a DOM tree of the converted XML document when the character string is described as the contents of a new element.

In particular, in the second embodiment, symbols related to tagging in non-key elements (tag symbols “<” and “>”) are converted into other character strings that are not related to tagging by a description method called “entity reference”. Has been replaced.
An entity is an entity that stores data that can be part of an XML document in some form, such as a file or a replacement character string. When “entity reference” is performed, “& entity name;” is described in the XML realization value.

  Usually, in a document type definition (DTD), a correspondence relationship between an entity name and an original file name or character string is declared. However, the five entities <,>, &, ', "related to tagging shown in Table 1 below can be used without DTD. For example, entities (characters to be replaced) in element contents When “<” is described, “<” is replaced with the character string “&lt;” by the entity reference description using the entity name “lt”. Similarly, “>” is replaced with “&gt;”, “&” is replaced with “&amp;”, “′” is replaced with “&apos;”, and ““ ”is replaced with“ &quot; ”.

  Using such entity reference descriptions, replace the symbols "<" and ">" representing the tags in the element content with entity reference character strings "<" and ">", respectively. The tag symbol that has been used is not processed as a tag by a parser (syntactic analysis software). Therefore, when combining non-key elements into one element, a series of non-key elements in which tag symbols are replaced with entity reference character strings are enclosed with tags such as <information> </ information>, and the tag name "information" If it is the contents of the new element, the series of non-key elements will be treated as simple element contents. Such a conversion method is organized and described as follows.

(1) Extract a series of non-key elements.
First record: <Department> Department A </ Department><Address> City A </ Address><Telephone> 123 </ Telephone>
Second record: <Department> Department B </ Department><Telephone> 456 </ Telephone><Telephone> 789 </ Telephone>
(2) Replace the tag symbol with the entity reference character string.
Replace "&lt;" with "&lt;" and "&gt;" with "&gt;" First record: &lt; Department &gt; A Department &lt; / Department &gt;&lt; Address &gt; A City &lt; / Address &gt;&lt; Phone &gt; 123 &lt; / Phone &gt;
Second record: &lt; Department &gt; B &lt; / Department &gt;< Telephone > 456 < / Telephone >&lt; Telephone &gt; 789 &lt; / Telephone &gt;
(3) By enclosing a series of non-key elements to which entity references are applied with tags <information></information> for each record, the series of non-key elements are collected as the contents of one element.

First record: <Information>&lt; Department &gt; A Department &lt; / Department &gt;&lt; Address &gt; A City &lt; / Address &gt;&lt; Telephone &gt; 123 &lt; / Telephone &gt;</Information>
Second Record: <Information>&lt; Department &gt; B &lt; / Department &gt;&lt; Telephone &gt; 456 &lt; / Telephone &gt;&lt; Telephone &gt; 789 &lt; / Telephone &gt;</Information>
[2-2] System of Second Embodiment and Flow of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing The structured document conversion method according to the second embodiment of the present invention is also applied to the system described with reference to FIG.

  It is extremely troublesome and troublesome to create one style sheet (XSL sheet) corresponding to each XML document for various types of XML documents. Therefore, in order to save the effort, in the second embodiment, as will be described later with reference to FIG. 27, specifications (record name, key tag name, non-key tag name, etc.) for converting the data structure of the XML document are described in the XML document. (Conversion specification document) is created and given a conversion execution procedure, and conversion / inverse conversion of the XML document is executed based on the conversion specification document as described later with reference to FIGS.

  Further, in the second embodiment, as will be described later with reference to FIGS. 39A to 39D, a conversion style sheet for instructing a conversion execution procedure based on a given conversion specification document, and vice versa. A reverse conversion style sheet for instructing the conversion execution procedure is automatically generated, and the structured document conversion processor (XSLT processor) is used to execute data structure conversion / inverse conversion for the XML document using the style sheet. . If the conversion / inverse conversion execution procedure is given in the style sheet as described above, the conversion / inverse conversion can be executed by a standard XSLT processor. Therefore, in almost all kinds of XML document systems, the second embodiment is applied. Conversion / inverse conversion processing can be executed.

  Even when the conversion method of the second embodiment is applied to the system shown in FIG. 2, the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism (XSLT processor) 10 reads the conversion specification document by the XML document and also converts the input XML document to be processed. Read, convert the input XML document based on the conversion specification (actually, a structure conversion style sheet), and output an XML document subjected to predetermined data structure conversion. The converted XML document is subjected to data processing (for example, tag search) by application software via the standard API 20, and an XML document after data processing is obtained. When a tag search is performed as data processing, the search result is obtained in the form of an extracted XML document. This extracted XML document is read into the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 and is converted back into an XML document having the original data structure based on the conversion specification (actually, the reverse conversion style sheet), and the final data processing is performed. The resulting XML document is obtained.

In the second embodiment, a specification XML document for data structure conversion read by the XSLT conversion unit 11 will be described later with reference to FIG. Further, the structure conversion style sheet and the reverse conversion style sheet generated by the XSLT conversion unit 11 will be described later with reference to FIGS. 28 and 29, respectively.
[2-3] XML Document Conversion Method and Specific Conversion Example in the Second Embodiment In FIGS. 23 to 26, the tabular XML document shown in FIG. First to fourth specific examples of conversion results obtained by applying the structured document conversion method are shown. Again, the elements of the tag names “name” and “company” are used as key elements, and the elements of the tag names “department”, “address”, and “telephone” are used as non-key elements.

  In the first specific example shown in FIG. 23, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements, a new element having a tag name “information” is created, and the non-key element description A character string is created by replacing the tag symbols “<” and “>” with character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” by entity reference description, respectively, and this character string is described as the contents of a new element. The key elements are described as they are without any conversion in the converted XML document. At this time, information for distinguishing between key elements and non-key elements and information on new elements (tag name “information”) are described and specified in the conversion specification document, and based on this conversion specification document, Data structure conversion is performed on the XML document to be converted, and reverse conversion is performed on the converted XML document to return the description of the non-key elements to the original state.

  In the second specific example shown in FIG. 24, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements, and a new element (empty element) to which the tag name “information” and the attribute name “contents” are assigned. ) And a character string in which the tag symbols “<” and “>” are replaced with the character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” in the entity reference description in the description of the non-key element, respectively. Is described as an attribute value corresponding to the attribute name “contents” of the new element. The key elements are described as they are without any conversion in the converted XML document. At this time, information for distinguishing key elements from non-key elements and information about new elements (tag name “information” and attribute name “contents”) are specified and described in the conversion specification document. Based on the specification document, data structure conversion for the XML document to be converted and reverse conversion for the converted XML document are performed.

  In the third specific example shown in FIG. 25, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements, and a new attribute name “contents” is assigned to the parent element (tag name “person”) of the non-key elements. And create a character string in which the tag symbols "<" and ">" are replaced with the character strings "&lt;" and "&gt;" respectively in the entity reference description in the description of the non-key element. Describe as attribute value corresponding to attribute name “contents” of parent element. The key elements are described as they are without any conversion in the converted XML document. At this time, information for distinguishing key elements from non-key elements and information regarding parent elements (tag name “person” and attribute name “contents”) are described and specified in the conversion specification document. Based on the document, data structure conversion for the XML document to be converted and reverse conversion for the converted XML document are performed.

  In the fourth specific example shown in FIG. 26, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements, and the tag symbols “<” and “>” are described as entity reference descriptions in the description of the non-key elements. A character string replaced with the character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” is created, and this character string is described as the content of the parent element (tag name “person”). The key elements are described as they are without any conversion in the converted XML document. At this time, information for distinguishing the key element from the non-key element and information regarding the parent element (tag name “person”) are described and specified in the conversion specification document, and the conversion is performed based on the conversion specification document. Data structure conversion for the target XML document and reverse conversion for the converted XML document are performed.

  As described above, in the conversion method of the second embodiment, similarly to the first embodiment, a plurality of non-key elements are combined into one element, and the non-key elements are converted into data while the application software is executing data processing. It can be handled collectively as an element unrelated to processing. Which of the various methods described with reference to FIGS. 23 to 26 is used as the conversion method can be selected and designated by an automatic conversion style sheet or the like. At this time, which of these various methods is used is determined by the amount of data in the XML document or by how many new elements increase with data processing. Any method may be adopted considering the essence of the present invention.

[2-4] Specific Example of Conversion Specification Document and Style Sheet of Second Embodiment FIG. 27 shows a specific conversion specification document when the table format XML document shown in FIG. (XML document) is shown. Here, the case where the XML document to be converted is tabular data has been described. However, even if the XML document to be converted is non-tabular data, conversion / inversion is performed using the conversion specification document shown in FIG. Conversion can be performed. The conversion specification document shown in FIG. 27 is for realizing the conversion method described in FIG.

  In the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 27, the tag name “name list” of the root and the tag name “person” of the record are described, and the tag name “name” of the key element as the contents of the element of the tag name “key” and To distinguish between key elements and non-key elements by describing “company” and the tag name “department”, “address”, and “phone” of the non-key element as the contents of the element with the tag name “nonkey” Is described. In addition, the content of the element of the tag name “nonkey” includes the element of the tag name “merged_item”, and the content of this element is the tag name “ "Information" is described. Such a conversion specification document instructs the data structure conversion execution procedure of the XML document.

  Then, the XSLT conversion unit 11 shown in FIG. 2 reads the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 27 and uses the conversion specification document and the automatic conversion style sheet (automatic conversion XSL sheet; not shown) for structure conversion shown in FIG. A style sheet (XSL sheet) and a reverse conversion style sheet (XSL sheet) shown in FIG. 29 are generated. The structure conversion style sheet shown in FIG. 28 is read by the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 and used to perform data structure conversion on the XML document to be converted (input XML document). In addition, the style sheet for inverse transformation shown in FIG. 29 is an XML document (original XML document (extracted XML document, converted XML document)) that is read by the XSLT inverse transformation unit 13 and processed by the application software 30. This is used to restore a non-key element to an XML document that has been returned to its original state.

  Up to this point, the case where the non-key element in each record has a single hierarchy and no attribute has been described. However, the conversion method of the second embodiment also has a case where the non-key element has a plurality of hierarchies (hierarchy is different). This is also applied by extending the above-mentioned principle even when it is deeper or has attributes. In other words, for each hierarchy, replace the symbol related to the tag of the non-key element with a character string based on the entity reference description, and provide a new element with the substitution result as the element content in the same hierarchy, or use the substitution result as a new attribute value. Elements can be provided in the same hierarchy, or the replacement result can be described as the element content of the parent element or the attribute value of the new attribute.

  FIG. 30 is a flowchart (steps S1, S2, S5, and S5) for explaining a procedure for creating a conversion specification document when the non-key elements in the record have a hierarchical structure and have attributes in the second embodiment. S6). However, the procedure shown in FIG. 30 is a procedure for creating a conversion specification when the number of hierarchies in a record is arbitrary and a non-key element has an arbitrary attribute. Further, the conversion specification document created by the method shown in FIG. 30 is for realizing the conversion method described in FIG.

  When creating a conversion specification document when the non-key elements in the record have a hierarchical structure and have attributes, first, as shown in FIG. 30, the root and the tag name of the record are set to the element “structure”. (Step S1). Further, the elements in the record are divided into two groups of key elements and non-key elements (step S2). Then, the tag name of the key element is designated at the <item> location in <key> (step S5), and the tag name of the non-key element is designated at the <item> location in <nonkey> (step S5). Step S6).

In step S6, information on non-key elements is described as a conversion specification document according to the following procedures (1) and (2).
Step (1): Specify <merged_item> as the tag name of a new element that describes non-key elements grouped together.
Step (2): Describe the tag name of the non-key element after <item>.

[2-5] Specific Conversion Processing Procedure by the Conversion Method of the Second Embodiment Next, with reference to FIGS. 31 to 39, the conversion processing procedure by the structured document conversion method as the second embodiment of the present invention. Will be described.
FIG. 31 to FIG. 38 show the processing procedure when the data structure conversion / inverse conversion processing is executed using Java software using DOM and XSLT, similar to the procedure described with reference to FIG. 18 and FIG. It is. In FIG. 31 to FIG. 38, the steps denoted by the same step numbers as those in FIG. 18 and FIG. 19 execute the same or substantially the same processes as those described in FIG. 18 and FIG. Is omitted. That is, in the following description, the description of the process in the step which attached | subjected step number A1-A11, A15, A16 and B1-B11, B14, B15 is abbreviate | omitted. Further, the processing procedure shown in FIGS. 31 to 38 does not use the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 as shown in FIG. 2, and processes the conversion target XML document and the converted XML document based on the conversion specification document. It is a processing procedure at the time of performing.

[2-5-1] First Example of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing Procedure FIG. 31 illustrates a first example of a processing procedure when data structure conversion is performed on a conversion target XML document based on a conversion specification document. FIG. 32 is a flowchart for explaining a first example of a processing procedure when reverse conversion of the data structure is performed on the converted XML document (processed XML document) based on the conversion specification document. It is. The first example described here corresponds to the conversion method described in FIG.

In the first example of the conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 31, when the element data extracted in step A7 is a non-key element (YES route in step A11), the tag name “information” specified in advance by the conversion specification document is stored. A new element (<information> tag) is created (step A31). If a new element corresponding to a non-key element has already been created, this creation process is omitted.
Further, the tag symbols “<” and “>” in the description of the non-key element are respectively replaced with character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” based on the entity reference description (step A32). In step A32, if the same character as the symbol related to tagging (see Table 1) appears in the contents of the non-key element, the character is replaced with a character string based on the entity reference description.

When a new element is created in step A31, the replacement result character string in step A32 is described as the content of the new element. If a new element corresponding to the non-key element has already been created, the replacement result character string in step A32 is described after the replacement result character string in the content of the new element (step A33). Thereafter, the process returns to step A7.
On the other hand, in the first example of the inverse conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 32, when a new element (<information> tag) in which non-key elements are collected is cut out in step B7 (YES route in step B11), the new element The character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” in the content description are restored to the original tag symbols “<” and “>” (step B31). In step B31, if the content of the new element contains another character string based on the entity reference description, the character string is restored to the original symbol related to tagging (see Table 1). To do. Then, after the description of the element (<information> tag) in which the non-key elements are grouped is deleted in the restored XML document (step B32), the process returns to step B7.

[2-5-2] Second Example of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing Procedure FIG. 33 illustrates a second example of a processing procedure when data structure conversion is performed on a conversion target XML document based on a conversion specification document. FIG. 34 is a flowchart for explaining a second example of a processing procedure when performing reverse conversion of the data structure on the converted XML document (processed XML document) based on the conversion specification document. It is. The second example described here corresponds to the conversion method described in FIG.

In the second example of the conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 33, when the element data extracted in step A7 is a non-key element (YES route in step A11), the tag name “information” and the attribute name “contents” are assigned. A new element (<information> tag) is created (step A34). If a new element corresponding to a non-key element has already been created, this creation process is omitted.
Further, the tag symbols “<” and “>” in the description of the non-key element are respectively replaced with character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” based on the entity reference description (step A35). In step A35, if the same character as a symbol related to tagging (see Table 1) appears in the contents of the non-key element, the character is replaced with a character string based on the entity reference description.

  When a new element is created in step A34, the replacement result character string in step A35 is described as the “contents” attribute value of the new element. If a new element corresponding to the non-key element has already been created, the replacement result character string in step A35 is described after the replacement result character string in the “contents” attribute value of the new element (step A36). ). Thereafter, the process returns to step A7.

  On the other hand, in the second example of the inverse conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 34, when a new element (<information> tag) in which non-key elements are collected is cut out in step B7 (YES route in step B11), the new element The character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” in the description of the “contents” attribute value are restored to the original tag symbols “<” and “>” (step B33). In step B33, if the “contents” attribute value in the new element includes another character string based on the entity reference description, the character string is replaced with the original symbol related to tagging (Table 1). To restore).

Then, in the restored XML document, the description of the element (<information> tag) that summarizes the non-key elements is deleted, and the “contents” attribute value of this element (<information> tag) (result restored in step B33) Is inserted as an element content next to the key element (step B34). Thereafter, the process returns to step B7.
[2-5-3] Third Example of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing Procedure FIG. 35 illustrates a third example of a processing procedure when data structure conversion is performed on a conversion target XML document based on a conversion specification document. FIG. 36 is a flowchart for explaining a third example of the processing procedure when performing reverse conversion of the data structure on the converted XML document (processed XML document) based on the conversion specification document. It is. The third example described here corresponds to the conversion method described in FIG.

In the third example of the conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 35, when the element data cut out in step A7 is a non-key element (YES route in step A11), the attribute name “contents” is assigned to the parent element (<person> tag). Are set (step A37). If a new attribute has already been set, this creation process is omitted.
Further, the tag symbols “<” and “>” in the description of the non-key element are respectively replaced with character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” based on the entity reference description (step A38). In step A38, when the same character as the symbol related to tagging (see Table 1) appears in the contents of the non-key element, the character is replaced with a character string based on the entity reference description.

  When a new attribute is set in step A37, the replacement result character string in step A38 is described as the “contents” attribute value of the parent element. When the new attribute corresponding to the non-key element has already been set, the replacement result character string in step A37 is described after the replacement result character string in the “contents” attribute value of the parent element (step A39). ). Thereafter, the process returns to step A7.

  On the other hand, in the third example of the inverse conversion process procedure shown in FIG. 36, the process in step B9 ′ is executed instead of the process in steps B9 and B11 described above. In this step B9 ′, whether or not the element cut out in step B7 is a merge parent element (here, a <personal> tag having a “contents” attribute value) in which non-key elements are grouped as “contents” attribute values. Determine whether.

  If it is not a merge parent element (NO route of step B9 ′), the process proceeds to the process of step B10 described above. If it is a merge parent element (YES route of step B9 ′), the “contents” attribute value of the parent element is set. The character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” in the description are restored to the original tag symbols “<” and “>” (step B35). In this step B35, if the “contents” attribute value in the parent element includes another character string based on the entity reference description, the character string is replaced with the original symbol related to tagging (Table 1). To restore).

Then, in the restored XML document, the attribute description set for the non-key element in the parent element is deleted, and the “contents” attribute value of the attribute (the result restored in step S35) is changed to the original child element. The element content is inserted next to the description (step B36). Thereafter, the process returns to step B7.
[2-5-4] Fourth Example of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing Procedure FIG. 37 illustrates a fourth example of a processing procedure when data structure conversion is performed on a conversion target XML document based on a conversion specification document. FIG. 38 is a flowchart for explaining a fourth example of a processing procedure when performing reverse conversion of the data structure on the converted XML document (processed XML document) based on the conversion specification document. It is. The fourth example described here corresponds to the conversion method described in FIG.

  In the fourth example of the conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 37, when the element data extracted in step A7 is a non-key element (YES route in step A11), the tag symbol “<”, in the description of the non-key element, “>” Is replaced with character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” according to the entity reference description, respectively (step A40). In step A40, if the same character as a symbol related to tagging (see Table 1) appears in the contents of the non-key element, the character is replaced with a character string based on the entity reference description. Then, the replacement result character string in step A40 is described as the contents of the parent element (<personal> tag) of the non-key element (step A41). Thereafter, the process returns to step A7.

On the other hand, in the fourth example of the inverse conversion process procedure shown in FIG. 38, the process in step B9 ″ is executed instead of the process in step B9 ′ described above. In this step B9 ″, the process is cut out in step B7. It is determined whether or not the element is a merge parent element in which non-key elements are grouped as element contents.
When it is not a merge parent element (NO route of step B9 ″), the process proceeds to the above-described processing of step B10, while when it is a merge parent element (YES route of step B9 ″) The character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” are restored to the original tag symbols “<” and “>” (step B37). In step B37, if the element content in the parent element includes another character string based on the entity reference description, the character string is replaced with the original symbol related to tagging (see Table 1). Restore. Then, in the restored XML document, the result restored in step B37 is inserted as element content next to the original description of the child element (step B38), and the process returns to step B7.

[2-5-5] Fifth Example of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing Procedure FIGS. 39A to 39D execute the data structure conversion / inverse conversion processing according to the second embodiment only with the XSLT processor. The processing procedure in the case of doing is shown. That is, the processing procedure shown in FIGS. 39A to 39D uses the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10 shown in FIG. 2, and based on the conversion specification document, the conversion target XML document and the converted XML document This is a processing procedure when executing processing on a document.

Here, FIG. 39A and FIG. 39B are respectively for explaining the procedure for creating the conversion style sheet and the reverse conversion style sheet (processing in the XSLT conversion unit 11) in the second embodiment. It is a flowchart.
FIG. 39C shows a processing procedure (conversion processing procedure) when the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 performs data structure conversion on the conversion target XML document based on the structure conversion style sheet in the second embodiment. FIG. 39D is a flowchart for explaining an XML document (processed XML document) converted by the XSLT inverse conversion unit 13 based on the reverse conversion style sheet in the second embodiment. 6 is a flowchart for explaining a processing procedure (fifth example of the inverse transformation processing procedure) when performing inverse transformation of the data structure on the data.

  Prior to performing the process on the conversion target XML document, first, as shown in FIG. 39A, the XSLT conversion unit 11 reads the conversion specification document described in XML, and from the description of the conversion specification document. After analyzing the conversion specifications (step A1), a data structure conversion style sheet is created using the conversion specifications and the automatic conversion style sheet (step A20). Similarly, as shown in FIG. 39B, the XSLT conversion unit 11 reads a conversion specification document described in XML, analyzes the conversion specification from the description of the conversion specification document (step B1). The data structure reverse conversion style sheet is created using the conversion specification and the automatic conversion style sheet (step B20). Note that the processing procedure described with reference to FIGS. 39A and 39B is the same as the processing procedure described with reference to FIGS. 20A and 20B in the first embodiment.

  When the data structure conversion is performed on the conversion target XML document, the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 specifies the conversion target XML document and the structure conversion style sheet, as shown in FIG. Then, the conversion process is started (step A21). Thereafter, the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 performs step A2 of FIG. 31, FIG. 33, FIG. 35, or FIG. 37 according to the method selected from the four types of conversion methods (the conversion methods described with reference to FIGS. 23 to 26, respectively). The same processing as the subsequent processing is executed.

  On the other hand, when the data structure is reversely converted to the converted XML document, as shown in FIG. 39D, the XSLT reverse conversion unit 13 sets the reverse conversion target XML document, the reverse conversion style sheet, Is designated and the inverse conversion process is started (step B21). Thereafter, the XSLT inverse transform unit 13 performs step B2 in FIG. 32, FIG. 34, FIG. 36, or FIG. 38 according to the method selected from the four types of conversion methods (the conversion methods described with reference to FIGS. 23 to 26, respectively). The same processing as the subsequent processing is executed.

In this way, also in the second embodiment, as shown in FIG. 2, the application software 30 uses the standard API (DOM) 20 to convert the converted XML from the XSLT structure conversion unit 12 with the number of elements reduced. Since processing such as tag search is performed on the document, the processing speed by the application software 30 is greatly increased as in the first embodiment.
[2-6] Effect of Second Embodiment As described above, according to the structured document conversion method as the second embodiment of the present invention, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are converted into key elements and non-key elements. In the XML document to be converted, the key element is described as it is, while the non-key elements are grouped into one tag and the tag symbol in the description of the non-key element is replaced with a character string not related to tagging. Since it is converted into an XML document, the same effect or advantage as the structured document conversion method of the first embodiment can be obtained. At this time, the XML document can be converted very easily by replacing the tag symbols “<” and “>” with the character strings “&lt;” and “&gt;” based on the entity reference description, respectively.

[3] Description of Third Embodiment [3-1] Principle of Structured Document Conversion Method of Third Embodiment Referring to FIG. 1 (A), FIG. 3 (A), and FIG. The principle of the structured document conversion method as an embodiment will be described.
In the XML document described above with reference to FIGS. 1A and 3A, the tag name “name” and “company” elements are used as key elements, and the tag name “department”, “address”, and “telephone” elements. FIG. 40 shows a memory expansion format of the converted XML document obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the third embodiment to this XML document. The development format shown here is a development format on the memory when the application software operates the converted XML document via the standard API (DOM).

  In the XML document shown in FIG. 40, a new element having a tag name “compressed” is created, and the contents of this new element are non-key elements of tag names “department”, “address”, and “telephone”. A compressed character string obtained by compressing a character string that is a group of is described. This compressed character string is obtained by compressing a character string in which non-key elements are grouped by a data conversion method of the present invention described later with reference to FIG. Further, the key elements of the tag names “name” and “company” are described as they are.

In this way, in the converted XML document, the non-key elements combined into one element for each record are converted into a compressed character string by a predetermined data conversion method, thereby describing the elements included in the XML document. , That is, the number of child elements of the tree expanded on the memory can be greatly reduced, and non-key elements can be handled collectively at the time of expansion or data processing.
Here, the compressed character string may be described as the content of a new element in the converted XML document (see FIG. 40 and FIG. 44A), or may be described as the attribute value of the new element. [See FIG. 44 (B)]. FIG. 40 for explaining the principle of the conversion method of the third embodiment shows a DOM tree of the converted XML document when the compressed character string is described as the contents of a new element.

[3-2] Data conversion method (data compression / decompression method) in the third embodiment
By the way, as described above in the prior art 3, since the compressed file is usually binary data, it cannot be placed in an XML document consisting only of character codes.
Therefore, if binary compressed data is converted into a character code as in the data conversion method of the present invention, the compressed data (compressed character string) can be described as element contents or attribute values of the XML document.

However, it should be noted that character codes having a special meaning in the structured document are not included in the set of character codes used for the compressed character string. In the case of an XML document, the character codes having the special meaning are the symbols <,>, &, "," related to tagging shown in Table 1.
Furthermore, since the XML document can take various character code systems (UTF-8, UTF-16, Shift_JIS, EUC, etc.), the character code system of the XML document is converted simply by expressing the compressed data with the character code. When this occurs, the compressed character string representing the compressed data is also automatically converted, which may cause a problem that the compressed data cannot be restored to the original state.

  In consideration of the above cautions and problems, the data conversion method of the present invention uses ASCII codes excluding character codes related to tagging as character codes that express compressed data (compressed character strings). . The ASCII code is a character code set that is commonly included in various character code systems. Therefore, if the compressed character string is described in ASCII code, the bit string constituting the compressed character string is not converted even if the character code system conversion is performed on the XML document including the compressed character string. It is kept as it is.

As will be described later with reference to FIG. 45, by adding information indicating the character code type at the time of compression to the compressed character string, the character code type of the data restored from the compressed character string can be changed. The character code system can be recognized, and by matching the character code system with the current character code system of the XML document, the consistency of the character code system of the entire XML document can be maintained.
Here, the data conversion method (data compression / decompression method) used in the third embodiment will be described more specifically with reference to FIG. 41 (A), FIG. 41 (B) and FIG. 41A is a diagram for explaining the flow of data conversion processing (compression processing), FIG. 41B is a diagram for explaining the flow of data reverse conversion processing (decompression processing), and FIG. These are the figures which show the specific example of the look-up table (LUT) for character code conversion in 3rd Embodiment.

  When compressing an input character string (character string forming a non-key element in this embodiment) and packing it into a character code, first, as shown in FIG. A word (character string) registered in the static word dictionary (static dictionary) 41 is collated, and a word having the longest match with the word in the word dictionary 41 is sequentially cut out from the input character string. The dictionary number corresponding to the word is replaced (step S11).

  The data compression method using the static word dictionary 41 is a known technique using a dictionary created in advance. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 3-247167 (dictionary registration method and data compression method) and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-80813 ( Dictionary initialization method) and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-222903 (method and means for providing a static dictionary structure for compressing character data and expanding compressed data). The static word dictionaries 41 and 44 in the third embodiment are created in advance by checking the appearance frequency of samples.

  Next, referring to the code table 42 containing the variable-length code words assigned according to the appearance frequency, taking out the variable-length code corresponding to the fixed-length bit dictionary number and replacing the dictionary number with the variable-length code, Bit padding is performed so that the variable-length code becomes data for each byte. At this time, for each byte of data, byte packing is performed in which binary data obtained by variable length coding is packed by 6 bits (step S12). That is, in step S12, variable length coding (statistical data compression) is performed for assigning a shorter variable length code to a character or character string to be converted (dictionary number in the present embodiment) that has a higher appearance frequency, The binary data obtained by this variable length coding is packed into 1 byte converted data by 6 bits and output.

After that, for example, by using a character code conversion look-up table (LUT) 45 as shown in FIG. 42, each 1-byte conversion data (1-byte data packed with 6 bits) is converted into a character code code. The conversion result is output as a compressed character string (step S13).
Here, the LUT 45 is used for character code conversion (BASE64 encoding) at the time of 6-bit packing as described above, and corresponds to the values 0 to 63 represented by 6 bits and these values 0 to 63, respectively. Correspondence with character code is set. In particular, the LUT 45 shown in FIG. 42 converts 6-bit values 0 to 63 into A to Z (0x41 to 0x5A), a to z (0x61 to 0x7A), 0 to 9 (0x30 to 0x39), and + (0x2B), respectively. , / (0x2F) is created to correspond to the character code.

  At this time, the set of ASCII codes in the LUT 45 does not include the tag symbols “<” and “>”. That is, in the LUT 45, a set of ASCII codes excluding character codes related to tagging in the XML document is registered. Therefore, in the LUT conversion process in step S13, it is not necessary to perform a special escape process such as converting the tag symbol into another character string not related to tagging.

Using such a LUT 45, the 6-bit data packed in each conversion data is converted into a character code according to the ASCII code (a code corresponding to a printable character of the ASCII code), and the character code obtained for each conversion data Is output as a compression conversion result, that is, a compressed character string.
On the other hand, when the compressed character string compressed as described above is restored to the original character string, each character code of the compressed character string is first converted based on the LUT 45 as shown in FIG. LUT reverse conversion is performed to convert the numerical value from 0 to 63 (6-bit value) (step S21).

Thereafter, a process of unpacking 6 bits, that is, depacking (unpacking) for extracting 6-bit data from each converted data of 1 byte is performed, and the extracted binary data is converted into fixed-length bits based on the code table 43. The dictionary number is restored (step S22).
Then, each dictionary number restored in step S22 is compared with the dictionary number of the restoration static word dictionary (static dictionary) 44 to read a word (character string) corresponding to each dictionary number. By replacing the read word (character string), the original character string is restored (step S23).

Hereinafter, a conversion / inverse conversion process for an XML document, which is a representative of a structured document, performed using the above-described data compression / decompression method will be described.
[3-3] System of Third Embodiment and Flow of Conversion / Inverse Conversion Processing FIG. 43 shows a system to which the structured document conversion method according to the third embodiment of the present invention is applied, and conversion / inverse conversion in the system. It is a figure for demonstrating the flow of a process.

  It is extremely troublesome and troublesome to create one style sheet (XSL sheet) corresponding to each XML document for various types of XML documents. Therefore, in order to save the effort, in the third embodiment, as will be described later with reference to FIG. 46, specifications (record name, key tag name, non-key tag name, etc.) for converting the data structure of the XML document are described in the XML document. (Conversion specification document) is created and a conversion execution procedure is given, and conversion / inverse conversion of the XML document is executed based on the conversion specification document as described later with reference to FIGS.

  The system shown in FIG. 43 includes a data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism (processor) 10A, standard API 20, and application software 30. The data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A describes a conversion specification document (XML document) that describes information for distinguishing key elements from non-key elements and also describes information about new elements (elements that describe compressed character strings). ) Is read, the input XML document is converted by the structure conversion compression software obtained based on the conversion specification document, and the converted XML document is output.

  That is, the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A operated by the structure conversion compression software creates a new element to which a predetermined tag name (in this embodiment, “compressed”) is assigned, and then compresses static data for compression. Using the word dictionary 41, the code table 42, and the LUT 45, a character or character string forming a non-key element is compressed by the data compression method described with reference to FIG. While the column is described as the content or attribute of a new element in the converted XML document, the key element is described as it is in the converted XML document.

  The converted XML document is subjected to data processing (for example, tag search) by application software via the standard API 20, and an XML document after data processing is obtained. When a tag search is performed as data processing, a search result is obtained in the form of an extracted XML document. This extracted XML document is read into the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A, and the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A applies the reconstruction / structure reverse software obtained based on the conversion specification document to the extracted XML document. An inverse transformation process is performed and the final extraction result is output.

  That is, the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A operated by the reconstruction / structure inverse conversion software uses the restoration static word dictionary 43, the code table 44, and the LUT 45 to generate a predetermined tag name (in this embodiment, “compressed ”) Is restored to the original character string of the non-key element by the data restoration method described with reference to FIG. 41B, and then the restored non-key element is restored. Is used to restore and output an XML document having the original data structure. Thereby, an XML document as a final data processing result is obtained.

At this time, as shown in FIG. 43, the application software 30 performs tag search for the converted XML document with the reduced number of elements from the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A through the standard API (DOM) 20. Therefore, the processing speed by the application software 30 is greatly increased as in the first and second embodiments.
When the application software 30 performs a tag search on the converted XML document, an XML document (extracted XML document) describing a record hit by the tag search is extracted and output. This extracted XML document is inversely converted as described above by the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A, and the same search result (XML document) as that obtained when the application software 30 has performed a tag search on the original XML document is obtained. Will be.

  The XML document to which the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A performs reverse conversion is an XML document in which a small number of records extracted by the application software 30 are described. Conversion overhead is of little concern. Therefore, the processing executed many times by the application software 30 is greatly speeded up by performing the data structure conversion of this embodiment in advance, and the amount of operation memory used is also greatly reduced. become.

[3-4] XML Document Conversion Method and Specific Conversion Example in Third Embodiment In FIGS. 44 (A) and 44 (B), respectively, the tabular XML document shown in FIG. First and second specific examples of conversion results obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the third embodiment are shown. Again, the elements of the tag names “name” and “company” are used as key elements, and the elements of the tag names “department”, “address”, and “telephone” are used as non-key elements. In FIGS. 44 (A) and 44 (B), the underlined portion is a portion (character string) subjected to compression processing by the data compression method described in FIG. 41 (A).

  In the first specific example shown in FIG. 44A, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements, and a new element to which the tag name “compressd” is assigned is created. After the elements are grouped together, a compression character string is created by performing compression processing by the data compression method described with reference to FIG. 41A, and the compressed character string is described as the contents of the new element. The key elements are described as they are without any conversion in the converted XML document.

  That is, in the first record of the converted XML document shown in FIG. 44A, in the element of the tag name “compressd”, a series of non-key elements <department> A department </ department> <address> A city </ address A compressed character string obtained by compressing <telephone> 123 </ telephone> by the data compression method described with reference to FIG. 41A is described as element contents. In the second record, in the element of the tag name “compressd”, a series of non-key elements <department> B department </ department> <address> B city </ address> <phone> 456 </ phone> are shown in FIG. A compressed character string obtained by compression by the data compression method described in (A) is described as element contents.

  In the second specific example shown in FIG. 44 (B), the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements, and a new element having a tag name “compressd” and an attribute name “info” is given. (Empty element) is created, and the non-key elements are grouped together, and then compressed by the data compression method described with reference to FIG. 41A to create a compressed character string. Describe as an attribute value corresponding to the attribute name “info”. Key elements are described as they are without any conversion in the converted XML document.

  That is, in the first record of the converted XML document shown in FIG. 44B, in the element of the tag name “compressd”, a series of non-key elements <department> A department </ department> <address> A city </ address A compressed character string obtained by compressing <telephone> 123 </ telephone> by the data compression method described with reference to FIG. 41A is described as an attribute value of the attribute name “info”. In the second record, in the element of the tag name “compressd”, a series of non-key elements <department> B department </ department> <address> B city </ address> <phone> 456 </ phone> are shown in FIG. A compressed character string obtained by compression by the data compression method described in (A) is described as the attribute value of the attribute name “info”.

  An XML document can contain only a character code, but since the compressed data (compressed character string) obtained by the compression method described above is described by the character code, it can be described as it is in the XML document. However, in XML documents, the tag symbols “<” and “>” have a special meaning. As described above, since the character code of the compressed data is a printable character of the ASCII code other than the tag symbol, it is compressed. Even if data is described in element contents or attribute values, the whole is regarded as text.

  Also, in the conversion method of the third embodiment, similarly to the first embodiment and the second embodiment, a plurality of non-key elements are combined into one element and the non-key is applied while the application software is executing data processing. Elements can be handled collectively as elements unrelated to data processing. As a conversion method, which of the methods described in FIG. 44A or 44B is used can be selected and designated by a conversion specification document or the like. At this time, which one of these conversion methods is used is determined by the data amount of the XML document or by how many new elements increase with the data processing. In consideration of the essence of the present invention, it is possible to adopt either method.

As shown in FIG. 45, in the third embodiment, information indicating the type of the character code system of the XML document at the time of compression is placed at the head of the compressed character string (compressed data) described in the converted XML document. As an identification bit (2 bits in this case).
When the character code system of the XML document is fixed to, for example, UTF-8 and no conversion of the character code system occurs, no problem occurs. However, the XML document is not only UTF-8 but also UTF-16. Since the character code system such as Shift, JIS, EUC, etc. can be taken, the correspondence of the present invention when the character code system is changed will be described below.

If a specific character code system is selected for the compressed character string, the character code system of the compressed character string is automatically converted when the character code system of the XML document changes from the time of compression. If the bit sequence is changed, the compressed character string may not be restored to the original state.
On the other hand, in the present invention, as described above, since the compressed character string is described by the ASCII code that is commonly included in all the character code systems, even if the character code system of the original XML document is converted, The bit sequence of the compressed character string does not change, and the compressed character string can be restored normally.

  When the character code system of an XML document has been converted to an arbitrary character code from the time of compression, the compressed character string is restored to recognize the type of character code system at the time of compression, and the character code system is currently ) To match the character code system of the XML document. For this reason, in the third embodiment, as shown in FIG. 45, an identification bit for identifying the type of the character code system at the time of compression is added to the header of the compressed data.

  If there are four types of character code systems to be identified, UTF-8, UTF-16, Shift_JIS, and EUC, two identification bits are provided. In this case, for example, “00” is defined as UTF-8, “01” as UTF-16, “10” as Shift_JIS, and “11” as EUC. This identification bit is attached to a series of non-key elements to be compressed, and is converted into a compressed character string together with the non-key elements by the data compression method described with reference to FIG.

[3-5] Specific Example of Conversion Specification Document in Third Embodiment FIG. 46 shows a specific conversion specification document (XML document) when the tabular XML document shown in FIG. )It is shown. Here, the case where the XML document to be converted is tabular data has been described, but even if the XML document to be converted is non-tabular data, conversion / inversion is performed using the conversion specification document shown in FIG. Conversion can be performed. The conversion specification document shown in FIG. 46 is for realizing the conversion method described with reference to FIG.

  In the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 46, the tag name “name list” of the root and the tag name “person” of the record are described, and the tag name “name” of the key element is included as the contents of the element of the tag name “key_tags”. Distinguish between key elements and non-key elements by describing "company" and the tag name "department", "address", and "phone" of the non-key element as the contents of the element of the tag name "nonkey_tags" Information for this is described. In addition, the content of the element of the tag name “nonkey_tags” includes the element of the tag name “merged_tag”. As the content of this element, the tag name of a new element for combining the non-key elements into one “ “compressed” is described. Such a conversion specification document instructs the data structure conversion execution procedure of the XML document.

[3-6] Specific Conversion Processing Procedure by the Conversion Method of the Third Embodiment Next, with reference to FIGS. 47 and 48, the conversion processing procedure by the structured document conversion method as the third embodiment of the present invention. Will be described. 47 and 48, the steps denoted by the same step numbers as those in FIGS. 18 and 19 execute the same or substantially the same processes as those described in FIG. 18 and FIG. Is omitted. That is, in the following description, the description of the process in the step which attached | subjected step number A1-A11, A15, A16 and B1-B11, B14, B15 is abbreviate | omitted.

FIG. 47 is a flowchart for explaining a processing procedure when data structure conversion is performed on the conversion target XML document based on the conversion specification document. FIG. 48 shows a converted XML document ( It is a flowchart for demonstrating the process sequence at the time of performing reverse conversion of a data structure with respect to (processed XML document).
In the third embodiment, the data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 10A executes the structure conversion compression software and the decompression structure reverse conversion software described with reference to FIG. 43, according to the flowchart shown in FIG. 47 or FIG. The conversion specification document is read, and conversion / inverse conversion processing (data compression / decompression processing) is executed while referring to the code tables 41 and 44, the static / dictionary static word dictionaries 42 and 43, and the LUT 45.

  In the conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 47, when the element data cut out in step A7 is a non-key element (YES route in step A11), the non-key element is a non-key element group to be combined into one element. If it is the first one (YES route of step A51), a start tag with a tag name “compressed” designated in advance by the conversion specification document is created. (Step A52), the non-key element cut out this time is held (Step A53).

On the other hand, if the non-key element is not the first one (NO route in step A51), that is, if a new element corresponding to the non-key element has already been created, the start tag creation process in step A52 is jumped, The non-key elements cut out this time are connected together after the non-key elements already cut out and held (step A53).
Thereafter, it is determined whether or not the non-key element is the last non-key element group to be combined into one element (step A54). If it is not the last (NO route of step A54), The process returns to step A7.

  On the other hand, if it is the last one (YES route of step A54), an identification bit indicating the type of character code system is added to the non-key elements collected in step A53, and the description is made with reference to FIG. A compressed character string is obtained by performing compression processing by a data compression method. Then, the compressed character string is described as the content of the new element next to the start tag of the tag name “compressed”, and thereafter, an end tag of the tag name “compressed” is created and added (step A55). ). Thereafter, the process returns to step A7.

  Here, the case where the processing corresponding to the conversion method described in FIG. 44A is performed is described, but when the conversion method described in FIG. 44B is adopted, in step A52. Then, an empty element tag having the tag name “compressed” and the attribute name “info” is created as a new element, and the compressed character string is described as an attribute value of the “info” attribute of the new element (empty element) in step A55. .

  On the other hand, in the inverse conversion processing procedure shown in FIG. 48, when a new element (<compressed> tag) in which non-key elements are collected is cut out in step B7 (YES route in step B11), the content (or attribute value) of the new element ), The original character string constituting the non-key element is restored from the compressed character string by the data restoration method described in FIG. 41B, and the tag description of the non-key element is written. Is deleted, the restored non-key element is described in the restored XML document (step B39), and the process returns to step B7.

[3-7] Effect of Third Embodiment As described above, according to the structured document conversion method as the third embodiment of the present invention, the elements constituting the XML document to be converted are divided into key elements and non-key elements. The XML document to be converted is obtained by describing the key elements as they are, and combining the characters or character strings forming the non-key elements into one tag and compressing them by the data compression method shown in FIG. It is converted into an XML document described as a character code string (compressed character string). Therefore, the same effects and advantages as those of the first embodiment and the second embodiment described above can be obtained, and the data amount of the converted XML document can be greatly reduced.

  Further, by using the data compression method described with reference to FIG. 41A, there is a compression conversion technique capable of obtaining the compression result in the form of a character code and placing it in the XML document while efficiently compressing the XML document. As a result, the resources required for operations on the XML document are greatly reduced, and the amount of memory used for processing the XML document is reduced and the processing speed is increased.

At this time, an ASCII code excluding symbols related to tagging (for example, <,>, &, “,” in an XML document) is used as a character code that expresses compressed data. There is no symbol related to tagging in the compressed character string, and it is possible to reliably prevent erroneous processing during data processing.
Also, since the ASCII code is a character code set that is commonly included in various character code systems, even if the converted XML document is subjected to character code system conversion, a compressed character string using the ASCII code is formed. The bit string is kept in its original state without being affected by the conversion of the character code system. Therefore, the compressed character string included in the XML document whose character code system has been converted is correctly restored to the original non-key element.

Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 45, by adding an identification bit indicating the type of the character code system at the time of compression to the compressed character string, the type of the character code system of the data restored from the compressed character string is recognized. It is possible to maintain the consistency of the character code system of the entire XML document by matching the character code system with the current character code system of the XML document.
Prior to converting a non-key element into a compressed character string, the character string forming the non-key element is replaced with a dictionary number by using a static word dictionary 41 created in advance, so that variable-length encoding can be performed. Since the target character string can be further shortened, the compression efficiency can be further increased, and the data amount of the converted XML document can be further reduced.

[4] Others The present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and various modifications can be made without departing from the spirit of the present invention.
For example, in the above-described embodiment, the case where the structured document is an XML document has been described. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and other various structured documents are similar to the above-described embodiment. The same effects as those of the above-described embodiment can be obtained.

[5] Appendix (Supplementary note 1) The elements constituting the structured document to be converted are divided into a key element that is a target of data processing for the structured document and a non-key element that is not a target of the data processing.
Create a new element with a given tag name and given attribute name,
Create a tag name character string including the tag name of the non-key element, perform tag name conversion that describes the tag name character string as an attribute value corresponding to the predetermined attribute name in the new element,
Creating a content string containing the content of the non-key element, performing content conversion describing the content string as the content of the new element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Additional remark 2) The element which comprises the structured document of conversion object is divided into the key element used as the object of the data processing with respect to this structured document, and the non-key element which is not the object of the said data processing,
Create a new element given a predetermined tag name, a predetermined first attribute name, and a predetermined second attribute name,
Create a tag name character string including the tag name of the non-key element, perform tag name conversion that describes the tag name character string as a first attribute value corresponding to the first attribute name in the new element,
Creating a content character string including the content of the non-key element, performing content conversion describing the content character string as a second attribute value corresponding to the second attribute name in the new element;
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Additional remark 3) The element which comprises the structured document of conversion object is divided into the key element used as the object of the data process with respect to this structured document, and the non-key element which is not the object of the said data process,
Perform tag name conversion to create a new element given a tag name character string including the tag name of the non-key element as a predetermined tag name,
Creating a content string containing the content of the non-key element, performing content conversion describing the content string as the content of the new element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Supplementary note 4) The structured document conversion according to any one of Supplementary notes 1 to 3, wherein the tag name character string is created by connecting the tag names of the non-key elements via a delimiter. Method.
(Supplementary note 5) When the non-key element has a plurality of hierarchies, in the tag name character string, hierarchical structure identification information is added to the tag name of the non-key element having the plurality of hierarchies. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 4.

(Supplementary note 6) When the non-key element has an attribute, in the tag name character string, the attribute name identification information added with the attribute name identification information after the tag name of the non-key element having the attribute Describe the attribute name,
The content character string is created by connecting the contents of the non-key element via a delimiter, and the attribute is added via the delimiter after the content of the non-key element having the attribute in the content character string. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 4 or appendix 5, wherein the attribute value is described.

(Supplementary note 7) The structured document conversion method according to any one of Supplementary notes 1 to 5, wherein the content character string is created by connecting the contents of the non-key elements via a delimiter.
(Supplementary note 8) Create a conversion specification document describing information for distinguishing the key element from the non-key element and describing information about the new element,
The structured document according to any one of appendix 1 to appendix 7, wherein the structured document to be converted is converted based on the conversion specification document with respect to the description of the non-key element. Conversion method.

(Supplementary note 9) The structure according to supplementary note 8, wherein a reverse conversion is performed on the structured document subjected to the conversion based on the conversion specification document to return the description of the non-key element to the original state. Document conversion method.
(Supplementary Note 10) In the conversion specification document, a tag name of the non-key element and a shortened tag name shorter than the tag name and capable of specifying the tag name are described in association with each other.
At the time of the conversion, based on the conversion specification document, while performing a tag name shortened conversion to replace the tag name of the non-key element with the shortened tag name,
10. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 9, wherein tag name expansion conversion is performed to replace the short tag name with the tag name of the non-key element based on the conversion specification document during the reverse conversion.

(Supplementary Note 11) In the conversion specification document, tag name shortening conversion information indicating whether or not to perform the tag name shortening conversion at the time of the conversion is described.
The execution time or non-execution of the tag name shortening conversion and the tag name decompression conversion is selected based on the tag name shortening conversion information in the conversion specification document at the time of the conversion or the reverse conversion. 10. The structured document conversion method according to 10.

(Supplementary note 12) When the structured document to be converted is described in a table format in which the types and numbers of elements for each record are the same, information for distinguishing the key element from the non-key element is described. And creating a conversion specification document in which the tag name of the non-key element and the representative tag name representing the tag name are described in association with each other,
Any one of appendix 1 to appendix 11, wherein the structured document to be converted is subjected to tabular conversion that omits the tag name conversion and performs only the content conversion based on the conversion specification document. The structured document conversion method as described in one.

(Supplementary Note 13) Based on the conversion specification document, the tag name of the non-key element is determined from the representative tag name, and the description of the non-key element is returned to the original state for the structured document subjected to the table format conversion. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 12, wherein reverse table format reverse conversion is performed.
(Supplementary Note 14) When the structured document to be converted is described in a tabular format having the same type and number of elements for each record, information for distinguishing the key element from the non-key element is described. And creating a conversion specification document in which the tag name and attribute name of the non-key element are associated with the representative tag name as the predetermined tag name representing the tag name and the attribute name,
Any one of appendix 1 to appendix 11, wherein the structured document to be converted is subjected to tabular conversion that omits the tag name conversion and performs only the content conversion based on the conversion specification document. The structured document conversion method as described in one.

(Supplementary Note 15) Based on the conversion specification document, the tag name and attribute name of the non-key element are determined from the representative tag name, and the description of the non-key element is based on the structured document subjected to the tabular conversion. 15. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 14, wherein the table format reverse conversion is performed to return to the state of (14).
(Supplementary Note 16) In the conversion specification document, describe tabular information indicating whether or not the structured document to be converted is described in a tabular format.
16. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 13 or appendix 15, wherein execution / non-execution of the tabular conversion and the tabular reverse conversion is selected based on the tabular information in the conversion specification document .

(Supplementary note 17) The structured document according to supplementary note 16, wherein the tag name conversion is executed when it is described as the tabular information that the structured document to be converted is not tabular. Conversion method.
(Supplementary note 18) The structured document conversion method according to any one of supplementary notes 8 to 17, wherein the conversion specification document is created as a structured document and a conversion execution procedure is given.

(Supplementary Note 19) Based on the conversion specification document, a conversion style sheet for instructing the conversion is generated,
The structured document conversion method according to any one of appendix 8 to appendix 18, wherein the structured document conversion processor is configured to execute the conversion using the conversion style sheet.
(Additional remark 20) Based on this conversion specification document, the style sheet for reverse conversion which instruct | indicates the said reverse conversion is produced | generated,
20. The structured document conversion method according to any one of appendices 8 to 19, wherein the structured document conversion processor causes the reverse conversion to be performed using the reverse conversion style sheet.

(Supplementary note 21) The elements constituting the structured document to be converted are divided into a key element that is a target of data processing for the structured document and a non-key element that is not a target of the data processing.
Create a new element with a given tag name,
Create a character string by replacing a symbol related to tagging with a character string not related to tagging in the description of the non-key element,
Describe the character string as the content of the new element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Additional remark 22) The element which comprises the structured document of conversion object is divided into the key element used as the object of the data process with respect to this structured document, and the non-key element which is not the object of the said data process,
Create a new element with a given tag name and given attribute name,
Create a character string by replacing a symbol related to tagging with a character string not related to tagging in the description of the non-key element,
The character string is described as an attribute value corresponding to the predetermined attribute name in the new element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Additional remark 23) The element which comprises the structured document of conversion object is divided into the key element used as the object of the data processing with respect to this structured document, and the non-key element which is not the object of the said data processing,
Give a new attribute name to the parent element of the non-key element,
Create a character string by replacing a symbol related to tagging with a character string not related to tagging in the description of the non-key element,
The character string is described as an attribute value corresponding to the new attribute name in the parent element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Supplementary Note 24) The elements forming the structured document to be converted are divided into key elements that are targets of data processing on the structured documents and non-key elements that are not targets of data processing.
Create a character string by replacing a symbol related to tagging with a character string not related to tagging in the description of the non-key element,
Describe the character string as the content of the parent element of the non-key element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Supplementary Note 25) Create a conversion specification document that describes information for distinguishing the key element from the non-key element and describes information about the new element.
23. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 21 or appendix 22, wherein the structured document to be converted is converted based on the conversion specification document for the description of the non-key element.

(Supplementary Note 26) Create a conversion specification document that describes information for distinguishing between the key element and the non-key element and describes information about the parent element,
25. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 23 or appendix 24, wherein the structured document to be converted is converted with respect to the description of the non-key element based on the conversion specification document.

(Supplementary note 27) Supplementary note 25 or Supplementary note 26, characterized in that, based on the conversion specification document, reverse conversion is performed on the converted structured document to return the description of the non-key element to the original state. The structured document conversion method described in 1.
(Supplementary note 28) The structured document conversion method according to any one of supplementary notes 25 to 27, wherein the conversion specification document is created as a structured document and a conversion execution procedure is given.

(Supplementary Note 29) Based on the conversion specification document, a conversion style sheet for instructing the conversion is generated,
29. The structured document conversion method according to any one of appendix 25 to appendix 28, wherein the structured document conversion processor causes the conversion style sheet to be used for the conversion.
(Supplementary Note 30) Based on the conversion specification document, a reverse conversion style sheet for instructing the reverse conversion is generated,
The structured document conversion method according to any one of appendix 25 to appendix 29, wherein the structured document conversion processor is configured to execute the reverse conversion using the reverse conversion style sheet.

(Supplementary note 31) The structured document conversion according to any one of Supplementary notes 21 to 30, wherein an entity reference description of a symbol related to the tagging is used as a character string not related to the tagging. Method.
(Supplementary Note 32) When the structured document to be converted is an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) document, the symbols “<” and “>” related to the tagging are replaced with “&lt;” and “&gt;”, respectively. The structured document conversion method according to supplementary note 31, characterized by that.

(Additional remark 33) The element which comprises the structured document of conversion object is divided into the key element which is the object of the data processing with respect to this structured document, and the non-key element which is not the object of the said data processing,
Create a new element with a given tag name,
Variable length coding is performed in which a variable length code is assigned to a character or character string constituting the non-key element that has a higher appearance frequency, and binary data obtained by the variable length coding is converted into 1-byte converted data by 6 bits. By converting the 6-bit data packed in each conversion data into a character code according to the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code, the non-key element is converted into a compressed character string composed of the character code. ,
Describe the compressed string as the content of the new element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Supplementary Note 34) Elements constituting a structured document to be converted are divided into a key element that is a target of data processing for the structured document and a non-key element that is not a target of data processing.
Create a new element with a given tag name and given attribute name,
Variable length coding is performed in which a variable length code is assigned to a character or character string constituting the non-key element that has a higher appearance frequency, and binary data obtained by the variable length coding is converted into 1-byte converted data by 6 bits. By converting the 6-bit data packed in each conversion data into a character code according to the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code, the non-key element is converted into a compressed character string composed of the character code. ,
The compressed character string is described as an attribute value corresponding to the predetermined attribute name in the new element,
A structured document conversion method, wherein the key element is described as it is in the converted structured document.

(Supplementary Note 35) Prior to converting the non-key element into the compressed character string, the character string forming the non-key element is replaced with a dictionary number using a previously created static dictionary, and the character string including the dictionary number is The structured document conversion method according to appendix 33 or appendix 34, wherein the structured document is converted into the compressed character string.
(Supplementary Note 36) When the converted structured document is inversely converted, the compressed character string is extracted from the converted structured document,
Each character code in the compressed character string is converted into 6-bit data according to the ASCII code,
From the 6-bit data obtained for each character code, the character or character string constituting the non-key element is restored,
35. The structured document conversion method according to appendix 33 or appendix 34, wherein the original structured document is restored using the restored non-key element.

(Supplementary Note 37) Create a conversion specification document that describes information for distinguishing the key element from the non-key element and describes information about the new element.
37. The structured document according to any one of appendix 33 to appendix 36, wherein the structured document to be converted is converted based on the conversion specification document for the description of the non-key element. Conversion method.

(Supplementary note 38) The structure according to supplementary note 37, wherein, based on the conversion specification document, a reverse conversion is performed on the converted structured document to return the description of the non-key element to the original state. Document conversion method.
(Supplementary note 39) The structured document conversion method according to supplementary note 37 or supplementary note 38, wherein the conversion specification document is created as a structured document and a conversion execution procedure is given.

(Supplementary Note 40) Information indicating the type of character code system at the time of compression is attached to the compressed character string,
When reverse-converting the converted structured document, the type of the character code system at the time of compression is recognized with reference to the information,
The structured document according to any one of appendix 33 to appendix 39, wherein the compressed character string is restored so that the character code system of the recognized type matches the character code system at the time of the reverse conversion. Conversion method.

(Supplementary note 41) The structured document according to any one of supplementary note 33 to supplementary note 40, wherein the ASCII code set is obtained by removing a character code related to tagging in the structured document. Conversion method.
(Supplementary Note 42) Variable length coding is performed in which a variable length code is assigned to a character or character string to be converted that has a shorter appearance frequency,
A data conversion method comprising: packing binary data obtained by the variable length coding into 1-byte converted data by 6 bits and outputting the data.

(Supplementary note 43) 6-bit data packed in each conversion data is converted into a character code according to the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code,
43. The data conversion method according to appendix 42, wherein the character code obtained for each conversion data is output as a compression conversion result of the character or character string to be converted.
(Supplementary Note 44) When restoring the compression conversion result, each character code in the compression conversion result is converted into 6-bit data according to the ASCII code,
44. The data conversion method according to appendix 43, wherein the character or character string to be converted is restored from 6-bit data obtained for each character code.

    (Supplementary Note 45) The data conversion method according to Supplementary Note 43 or Supplementary Note 44, wherein the ASCII code set is a structured document excluding character codes related to tagging.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining the principle of a structured document conversion method according to a first embodiment of the present invention, in which (A) shows a memory expansion format of an XML document to be converted, and (B) shows (A). It is a figure which shows the memory expansion | deployment format of the XML document obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 1st Embodiment to an XML document. It is a figure for demonstrating the flow of the conversion / inverse conversion process in the system to which the structured document conversion method as 1st Embodiment of this invention is applied, and the system. (A) is a diagram showing a specific example of an XML document to be converted, and (B) to (F) are obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the first embodiment to the XML document shown in (A). It is a figure which shows the 1st-5th specific example of the obtained conversion result. (A) is a diagram showing a specific example of an XML document (table format) to be converted, and (B) and (C) are diagrams of the first embodiment when the XML document shown in (A) is in a table format, respectively. It is a figure which shows the 1st and 2nd specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method. It is a figure which shows the specific example of the XML document of conversion object. It is a figure which shows the 1st specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 1st Embodiment to the XML document shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the 2nd specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 1st Embodiment to the XML document shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the 3rd specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 1st Embodiment to the XML document shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the specific example of the conversion specification document in 1st Embodiment. FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a specific example of a conversion style sheet created by the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 9 in the first embodiment. FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a specific example of a reverse conversion style sheet created by the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 9 in the first embodiment. It is a figure which shows the specific example of the conversion specification document for tag name shortening in 1st Embodiment. It is a figure which shows the specific example of the conversion specification document which has a function which designates a data format (whether it is a table format) in 1st Embodiment. It is a figure which shows the specific example of the conversion specification document which has a function which designates a data format (whether tag name shortening conversion is performed) in 1st Embodiment. It is a figure which shows the 1st specific example of the conversion specification document in case non-key elements in a record have a hierarchical structure and have an attribute in 1st Embodiment. 6 is a flowchart for explaining a procedure for creating a conversion specification document when non-key elements in a record have a hierarchical structure and have attributes in the first embodiment. It is a figure which shows the 2nd specific example of the conversion specification document in case non-key elements in a record have a hierarchical structure and have an attribute in 1st Embodiment. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 1st Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the reverse conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 1st Embodiment of this invention. (A) and (B) are flowcharts for explaining the procedure for creating the conversion style sheet and the reverse conversion style sheet in the first embodiment, respectively, and (C) and (D) are the flowcharts of the present invention, respectively. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the modification of the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 1st Embodiment, and a reverse conversion process procedure. (A) And (B) is a flowchart for demonstrating the modification of the creation procedure of the style sheet for conversion and the style sheet for reverse conversion in 1st Embodiment, respectively. In order to explain the principle of the structured document conversion method as the second embodiment of the present invention, an XML document obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the second embodiment to the XML document shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the memory expansion | deployment format. It is a figure which shows the 1st specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 2nd Embodiment to the XML document shown to FIG. 4 (A). It is a figure which shows the 2nd specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 2nd Embodiment to the XML document shown to FIG. 4 (A). It is a figure which shows the 3rd specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 2nd Embodiment to the XML document shown to FIG. 4 (A). It is a figure which shows the 4th specific example of the conversion result obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of 2nd Embodiment to the XML document shown to FIG. 4 (A). It is a figure which shows the specific example of the conversion specification document in 2nd Embodiment. FIG. 28 is a diagram showing a specific example of a conversion style sheet created by the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 27 in the second embodiment. FIG. 28 is a diagram showing a specific example of a reverse conversion style sheet created by the conversion specification document shown in FIG. 27 in the second embodiment. In a 2nd embodiment, it is a flow chart for explaining a procedure which creates a conversion specification document when a non-key element in a record has a hierarchical structure and has an attribute. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 1st example of the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 1st example of the reverse conversion process sequence by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 2nd example of the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 2nd example of the reverse conversion process sequence by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 3rd example of the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 3rd example of the reverse conversion process sequence by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 4th example of the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 4th example of the reverse conversion process sequence by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment of this invention. (A) and (B) are flowcharts for explaining the procedure for creating the conversion style sheet and the reverse conversion style sheet in the second embodiment, respectively. (C) and (D) are the flowcharts of the present invention, respectively. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the 5th example of the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 2nd Embodiment, and an inverse conversion process procedure. In order to explain the principle of the structured document conversion method as the third embodiment of the present invention, an XML document obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the third embodiment to the XML document shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the memory expansion | deployment format. It is for demonstrating the data conversion method used by 3rd Embodiment, (A) is a figure for demonstrating the flow of a data conversion process (compression process), (B) is a data reverse conversion process (decompression process). It is a figure for demonstrating the flow of. It is a figure which shows the specific example of the lookup table for character code conversion in 3rd Embodiment. It is a figure for demonstrating the system of the structured document conversion method as 3rd Embodiment of this invention, and the flow of the conversion / inverse conversion process in the system. (A) and (B) respectively show first and second specific examples of conversion results obtained by applying the structured document conversion method of the third embodiment to the XML document shown in FIG. 4 (A). FIG. In 3rd Embodiment, it is a figure which shows the specific example of the compression character string to which the information which shows the classification of a character code type | system | group was provided. It is a figure which shows the specific example of the conversion specification document in 3rd Embodiment. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the conversion process procedure by the structured document conversion method as 3rd Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart for demonstrating the reverse conversion process sequence by the structured document conversion method as 3rd Embodiment of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

10 Data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism (structured document conversion processor)
10A Data structure conversion / inverse conversion mechanism 11 XSLT conversion unit (structured document conversion processor)
12 XSLT structure conversion unit (structured document conversion processor)
13 XSLT inverse conversion unit (structured document conversion processor)
20 Standard API
30 Application software (application)
41 Static word dictionary for compression (static dictionary)
42, 43 Code table 44 Static word dictionary for restoration (static dictionary)
45 Lookup table (LUT) for character code conversion

Claims (3)

A structured document conversion apparatus having a processing unit for converting a structured document,
The processing unit
For the elements constituting the structured document to be converted, read the distinction information for distinguishing between the key element that is the target of data processing for the structured document and the non-key element that is not the target of the data processing,
Creating a new element for the non-key element in the distinction information, given a predetermined tag name and a predetermined attribute name;
A tag name character string including the tag name of the non-key element is created by connecting the tag names of the non-key element via a delimiter, and the tag name character string corresponds to the predetermined attribute name in the new element As an attribute value
Connecting the contents of the non-key elements via a delimiter to create a content string containing the contents of the non-key element, describing the contents string as the contents of the new element,
A structured document conversion apparatus characterized in that the key element in the distinction information is described as it is in the converted structured document.   The processing unit reads the conversion specification document describing the distinction information and the tag name of the new element, and based on the conversion specification document, the non-key element of the non-key element is read from the structured document to be converted. The structured document conversion apparatus according to claim 1, wherein conversion is performed on the description. A structured document conversion apparatus having a processing unit for converting a structured document,
The processing unit
For the elements constituting the structured document to be converted, read the distinction information for distinguishing between the key element that is the target of data processing for the structured document and the non-key element that is not the target of the data processing,
Create a new element for the non-key element in the distinction information, given a predetermined tag name,
Creating a character string in which the symbol representing the tag in the description of the non-key element is replaced by an entity reference character string not related to tagging by the entity reference description, and describing the character string as the content of the new element;
A structured document conversion apparatus characterized in that the key element in the distinction information is described as it is in the converted structured document.

Images