JPH11259355A - Hypertext type information providing device and information retrieving device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To automatically update a Web page and to improve convenience for a user who accesses it through the use of an information retrieving device by making an information providing device on a linked side provide additional information in each Web page apart from the Web page. SOLUTION: When a browser, etc., accesses a Web page 205, it is checked whether additional information 207 stored in a URL table 202 corresponding to the page 205 needs to be updated. That is, when a prescribed time elapses after accessing the information 207 the last time, the information 207 is reacquired. When a 'Location:' in included in the acquired information 207, a new URL is recorded on a URL field of the table 202. Then access from the next time on is performed, based on the new URL. The table 202 is referred to by using a script recorded on a Web page generating script database 203 and a Web page generating part 204 generates Web page 205.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[Technical field to which the present invention pertains] WWW (World Wide Web)
The present invention relates to an information providing apparatus that provides hypertext information across a plurality of computers and an information search apparatus that searches for the information.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In the WWW, a WWW server (information providing device)
The Web page requested by the browser (information search device) is returned to the browser. This Web page is prepared in advance or generated in the WWW server, and is independent of other WWW servers.

[0003] Therefore, when a Web page includes a link to another WWW server, it cannot be reflected even if the linked WWW server changes. For example,
URL of linked web page (name of linked WWW server,
(Consisting of a pathname that indicates the location of the Web page on the server), the browser will not be able to find the link unless the link is modified.

[0004] In addition, a link is often accompanied by a summary of the linked web page, but if the content of the linked web page is changed, the summary may become inappropriate. is there.

[0005]

[0005] In the case of a popular Web page, a link can be established from many information providing devices. Therefore, it is not practical to notify the administrator of the link source information providing device that the Web page has been changed each time. Also, the linking side is the link destination We
Monitoring pages daily and maintaining Web pages will require dedicated maintenance personnel.

[0006] An object of the present invention is to enable an information providing apparatus on the linking side to cooperate with an information providing apparatus on a link destination, thereby providing
The purpose is to automatically update the Web page and make it easier for users accessing the information search device. For example, if a link to a Web page that provides a newspaper article is added with information that “Today is a closed day” when a newspaper is closed, the user does not need to follow the link in vain. Or, for a web page with many links,
If a popular Web page with a higher number of references in the eb page is placed in a position that is easier to see, the popular Web page will be more easily referenced.

For example, a search result output by an information providing apparatus (generally called a search engine) that searches and outputs a Web page including a keyword specified by a user among Web pages generally has a considerable number of results. Is enumerated, and it is extremely difficult for a user to find a desired Web page. By preferentially listing Web pages that have a high number of references among the candidate Web pages, it is possible to increase the probability that many users will find a Web page that is desired by many users.

[0008]

According to the present invention, in addition to providing a web page, a linked information providing apparatus can provide a web page.
Provide additional information for each page. Examples of the additional information include the following.

(1) The number of times a Web page is referenced, (2) whether the information provided by the Web page is valid, (3) If the URL of the Web page is changed, a new URL, (4)
Summary of Web page, (5) Image representing Web page,
(6) Keywords and the like included in the Web page.

Among these, additional information such as the number of page references and whether or not the information provided by the page is valid are automatically updated. It is desirable that the administrator of the providing apparatus set an appropriate one. If not set by the administrator, the information providing device may automatically generate the information from the Web page. For example, the gist of the page is the title of the web page (<T
ITLE> and </ TITLE>).

[0011] The information providing apparatus on the link side accesses the information providing apparatus at the link destination every time an access is made or at regular intervals, acquires additional information, and automatically updates the Web page. Of course, not all of the additional information can be obtained in all Web pages. However, if the number of references is obtained, a link to a Web page with a higher number of references can be placed in a more easily viewable position. Alternatively, the user may be alerted by changing the color of a link to a Web page that is particularly frequently referred to, or by blinking characters.

If the information provided by the linked Web page is not valid (for example, in a Web page serving as a gateway to a database, when the database is stopped for maintenance), the link is not displayed. Or, it is possible to add a note that the service is currently stopped. When the URL is changed and a new URL is obtained, the link destination and the acquisition destination of the additional information are corrected to the new URL. When a gist of a Web page or an image representative of a Web page is obtained, by adding to a link, it becomes a reference when a user selects a link. If a keyword is obtained, the search accuracy of a search engine or the like can be improved.

When additional information cannot be obtained due to a temporary network failure or a temporary failure of the linked information providing apparatus, the additional information before the failure is used. In addition, a default Web page update method when the information providing apparatus at the link destination does not provide each additional information is determined in advance.

For example, if the number of references cannot be obtained,
Treated as 0 times. In addition, a character string to be displayed by default is determined in case that the gist of the Web page cannot be obtained. The additional information can be obtained independently of the corresponding Web page. That is, it is not necessary to obtain the entire Web page when obtaining the additional information. Therefore, acquiring additional information corresponding to all linked Web pages and creating a page can greatly reduce the amount of data to be transferred as compared to acquiring the entire linked Web page.

[0015] In the above description, the information providing device is linked to the Web
In the case where the Web page is corrected with reference to the additional information of the page, the same effect can be obtained by providing the information search device with the same function. For example, an information search device generally has a set of links called bookmarks. By automatically rearranging this set in descending order of the number of references, an unpopular Web site that is not often referred to is referred to as a bookmark.
You don't have to visit pages, or Web pages that you think aren't very useful.

When displaying a Web page acquired by the information search apparatus, if a link is included, the additional information of the link destination is used to match the user's needs.
The page b can be modified and displayed. Some information search devices have a look-ahead function and automatically acquire the linked web page before the user follows the link. By giving priority to page prefetching, it becomes possible to prefetch a link having a high probability of being followed by the user.

[0017]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Hereinafter, a WWW of a link destination in WWW
Get additional information from server and generate Web page W
The present invention will be described in detail using an embodiment of a WW server. FIG. 2 shows a configuration diagram, and FIG. 1 shows a data flow diagram. WWW
The server 200 stores the W page in addition to the device 205 that stores the Web page.
A device 202 that stores a URL table that collects links included in each eb page, an additional information acquisition device 201 that obtains additional information from a linked WWW server and updates the URL table, and each Web page from the URL table Device 203 for storing a script for generating a Web page, and a device 20 for generating a Web page from a URL table and a generation script
4, and database 207 of additional information for each Web page
And a device 206 for updating the same.

As shown in FIG. 1, the URL table 110 stored in the URL table storage device 202 includes a label 111, a URL,
112 and additional information 113 are associated. In the Web page generation script, the link is referenced by a label, and the replacement shown in Table 1 is performed based on the additional information.

[0019]

【table 1】

FIG. 3 shows a flowchart of the WWW server.
When a web page is accessed from a browser or the like, first, in step 301, it is checked whether it is necessary to update the additional information 113 stored in the URL table corresponding to the web page. That is, if one hour or more has elapsed since the last access to the additional information, the additional information is obtained again (step 302).

When the link destination is a page that is frequently updated, the link may be shortened to about 10 minutes instead of one hour. Further, in a WWW server to which various pages are frequently accessed, additional information may be re-acquired and a Web page may be generated (step 303) not only at the time of access but also at regular intervals. At this time, reacquisition of additional information and generation of a Web page are performed with priority given to a link that is updated more complicatedly. In addition, when the load on the WWW server is heavy, by suppressing re-acquisition of additional information and generation of Web pages at regular intervals, the overall load on the WWW server can be reduced.

In the additional information, the extension of the URL 112 in the figure is .htm.
This is done by accessing the URL changed from l / .htm to .info. If there is no extension, supplement index.info. For example, if the URL is http://foo.com/, http://foo.com
Access /index.info. FIG. 4 shows an example of the additional information. Each line corresponds to one piece of additional information. ":" From the beginning of the line
Is the name of the additional information, and the contents after “:” are the contents of the additional information. For example, “RefCountMonth: 109” indicates that the number of accesses to the corresponding Web page in the past month is 1
Indicates 09 times. "ServiceAvailable: Yes"
Indicates that the service "Foo service" provided on this Web page is currently available. "Location: h
"tp.://www.foo.com/" indicates that the URL of this Web page has been changed, and that "http://www.foo.com/" is a new URL.

If “Location:” is included in the acquired additional information, a new URL is entered in the URL column of the URL table.
Record Therefore, subsequent access will be based on this new URL. In this embodiment, the additional information is accessed with a URL (extension .info) different from the Web page, but the additional information may be included in the header of the Web page. in this case,
When accessing only the additional information (not accessing the Web page itself), use the "HEAD" query. For example, http: //
When accessing foo.com/, port8 of TCP / IP of foo.com
Connect to No. 0 and send "GET / HTTP / 1.0". To access only the header, send "HEAD / HTTP / 1.0".

Next, in step 303, using the script recorded in the Web page generation script database 203, referring to the URL table 202, the Web page generation unit 2
04 generates a web page 205.

An example of the script is shown below. In this embodiment,
Although a script based on the Perl language is used, other script languages may be used. Further, instead of the script language, it may be described in C language or the like.

Print "<HEAD><TITLE> Test Page </ TITLE></HEAD>"; print "<BODY>"; print "<P>"; if (Abstract (L1) == "") {print "<A HREF=\"URL(L1 )\"> Foo.com page </A>";} else {print "<A HREF=\"URL(L1 )\"> Abstract (L1) </ A >";} if (ServiceAvailable (L1) ==" Yes ") {print" (service being provided) ";} elsif (ServiceAvailable (L1) ==" No ") {print" (service stopped) ";} print "<P>"; if (Abstract (L2) == "") {print "<A HREF=\"URL(L2 )\"> Bar.com page </A>";} else {print "<AHREF=\"URL(L2)\"> Abstract (L2) </A>";}print"<DL>"; for l = sort RefCount L3, L4, L5, L6, L7 {print"<DT><IMG SRC = \ "IMG (l) \">";print"<DD><AHREF=\"URL(l)\"> Abst (l) </A>";}print"</ DL >";print"</BODY>"; In the script, print"... "; outputs the character string enclosed by""as a Web page. However, the tokens listed in Table 1 are output after replacement.

In if (ServiceAvailable (L1) == “Yes”), it is checked whether the service provided by L1 is available. If available, “(service is being provided)” is output. , "(Service stopped)" is output. If the additional information “ServiceAvailable” cannot be obtained, nothing is output.

If (Abstract (L1) == ""), L1
If you cannot get the gist of "Foo.co.
output "page of m". If the abstract of L1 is obtained,
Output it. for l = sort RefCount L3, L4, L5
, L6, L7 {...} Are labeled L3, L4, L5, L6
, L7 are sorted in the order of their reference counts RefCount (Li), and {...} Are executed by assigning the labels to the variable l in descending order of the reference counts. That is, the links are arranged in descending order of the number of times of reference.

[0029]

According to the present invention, the additional information is provided by the WWW server separately from the Web page, so that the link source WWW server can generate the page using the additional information. For this reason, even if the content of the link destination or the URL is changed, it can automatically follow.

By acquiring the number of times of reference as additional information of the linked Web page, a link to a popular page can be arranged at a position that is easier to see and a user's convenience can be achieved.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a data flow diagram of a WWW server according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a WWW server.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of a WWW server.

FIG. 4 is an example of additional information.

[Explanation of symbols]

100: Link source WWW server, 110: URL table, 114: Web page, 115: Additional information, 120
… Linked WWW server

 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued on the front page (72) Inventor Toshihiko Nakano 5-2-1, Omika-cho, Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture Inside the Omika Plant of Hitachi, Ltd.

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. An information providing apparatus for providing information in the form of a web page, comprising: storage means for storing additional information indicating characteristics of each of the web pages; Additional information updating means for updating in accordance with input to the information providing device, and means for, when presenting a Web page, means for adding and presenting updated additional information corresponding to the Web page to be presented An information providing device characterized by the above-mentioned. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the additional information includes a reference number of Web pages, W
Whether the information provision on the eb page is in service or stopped, or the URL of the web page has been changed, the changed URL, the gist of the web page, the image representing the web page, and the keywords contained in the web page , An information providing device. 3. The information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the information providing apparatus is an information providing apparatus that provides a Web page including a link to another information providing apparatus, and provides another linked information. An information providing device, comprising: a unit for performing the Web page by acquiring additional information included in the device. 4. An information providing apparatus for providing information in the form of a Web page, a storage unit for storing additional information indicating characteristics of each of the Web pages, and an additional information stored in the storage unit for storing the additional information. An information providing unit that has an additional information updating unit that updates the information in response to an input to the providing device, and a unit that, when presenting the Web page, presents the updated additional information corresponding to the Web page to be presented; An information search device, comprising: input means for inputting additional information and a web page from a device; and means for deforming and displaying the web page using the additional information additional information input by the input means.