JP4593580B2 - Method for generating operation buttons for XML data - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention automatically generates and displays operation buttons for instructing a process to be executed by a computer from elements, attributes, and values of elements and attributes constituting data (XML data) described in an XML format. The present invention relates to a method for generating operation buttons for XML data to be displayed on a device.

  Normally, software that uses XML handles an instance of an XML schema that the software supports. In other words, when there is data described in the XML format (XML data), in order to analyze and utilize the data, it is necessary to prepare software that supports the schema of the XML. With the spread of XML technology, XML data of various schemas is flooded. However, at present, no mechanism has been devised that enables XML data having such an unspecified schema to be analyzed and utilized by a consistent operation.

  In order for users to easily analyze and utilize data, a method for automatically generating operation buttons for computer processing from data has already been developed (see Patent Document 1). In this method, a button class is set corresponding to an arbitrary field of a plurality of data stored in a storage device, and the value of the data stored in the storage device for each button class. Button groups and individual buttons corresponding to data values are set, and these button class, button group, and individual buttons are displayed on the display device as operation buttons for computer processing.

  However, since the method described in Patent Document 1 uses record format or CSV format data composed of fields as the source data, the operation button can be operated based on XML format data described by markup such as tags. It cannot be automatically generated directly. Even if the XML data is not directly input, it may be possible to convert the XML data into record format data composed of fields. In this case, it is necessary to convert the data using a dedicated program, XSLT, or manually. Therefore, the burden on the user is large.

In the method described in Patent Document 1, (1) a flat data structure composed of a plurality of fields is assumed, and hierarchical data cannot be handled. (2) variable component elements for each data There are technical limitations that data (data whose field configuration is not the same in all data) cannot be handled, and (3) it cannot flexibly cope with changes in data configuration such as addition or deletion of components (fields).
Japanese Patent No. 2702416

In order to automatically generate an operation button directly based on data (XML data) described in the XML format, there are the following problems.
(1) For XML data, which is structured data, it is necessary to access an arbitrary position and refer to or change the contents of the XML. For this purpose, it is necessary to analyze the XML data and to confirm the constituent elements of the input XML data in order to efficiently process the element names, attribute names, character string values, etc. constituting the XML data.

  (2) The structure of XML data is defined in order to automatically analyze the structure based on the relationship between the elements and attributes constituting the XML data and to efficiently perform a series of processes relating to the subsequent operation button generation. There is a need. For this purpose, it is necessary to generate a structure of XML data for efficiently grasping a given XML schema.

  (3) It is necessary to allow the user to specify an element (data unit identification element) for identifying data (data unit) to be automatically generated from the operation data from the XML data. For this purpose, based on (2), the XML data structure is displayed on the display device, and after the user confirms the data structure, the user specifies the data unit identification element from the input device. It needs to be possible.

  (4) Of the elements and attributes that make up the data unit and the ancestor elements and attributes related to the data unit identification element, those that are buttoned and those that are not buttoned but that you want to refer to after the button operation are collectively extracted When called as a target, it is necessary to allow the user to specify the extraction target. For this purpose, it is necessary to display the structure of the XML data on the display device based on (2), input an extraction target, and save the input contents together with the structure of the XML data.

(5) Based on the above (1) to (4), the data that is the basis of the operation button from the XML data, that is, the field corresponding to the element or attribute to be extracted and the button generation source data storing the data Must be generated.
(6) Based on the button generation source data, it is necessary to set button classes and individual buttons constituting the operation buttons by internal processing.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and allows operation buttons that allow a user to easily search, analyze, and utilize XML format data directly and automatically from XML data. An object of the present invention is to provide a method for generating operation buttons for XML data.

XML data manipulation buttons generation method of the present invention, based on the XML data stored in the storage device, a programmed central processing unit operation button generation method for XML data to execute to generate the operation button (1) All the elements and attributes constituting the XML data by regarding the XML data as a tree structure from the relation between the elements constituting the XML data, the relation between the elements and the attributes, and the values of the elements and the attributes XML data table storing information on mutual relations and positional relations is automatically generated and stored in a storage device. (2) The structure of the XML data is analyzed with reference to the XML data table and expressed in a schema language. (3) (i) Among the elements constituting the XML data, the schema definition is generated so as to be a reference element for generating an XML button. And (ii) the data unit itself, the value of each element of the descendant and ancestor in the XML data structure of the data unit, or the value of each attribute, and is desired to be extracted from the XML data Button information composed of an extraction target having a buttonization target designated via the schema definition as a value is formed, and (4) the schema definition and the button information are collectively stored as an XML data structure definition table (5) All the elements corresponding to the data unit of the button information are extracted from the XML data, the value of each element included in the extracted element itself, a descendant element or an ancestor element of the element, or each Extract the button information specified as the button object from the attribute value and extract it from the XML data corresponding to the data unit. The element is a record having a buttoned field corresponding to the buttonization target, and the value of the element or the attribute value extracted as designated as the buttonization target is the field value of the buttoned field 1 A button generation source data table composed of two or more records is automatically generated and stored in a storage device. (6) The button generation source data table is generated in correspondence with a unique value appearing in each buttoned field of the button generation source data table. An individual button, and a button class that is generated corresponding to each buttoned field and manages the individual buttons for each buttoned field, so that XML data can be accessed by selecting the individual button. The generated XML button is automatically generated and displayed on a display device.

  Thereby, based on the XML data, by setting the button class corresponding to the elements and attributes constituting the XML data, and setting the individual buttons corresponding to the values of the corresponding elements and attributes for each button class, Operation buttons for XML data can be automatically generated and displayed on a display device. Further, by automatically generating an XML data table, it is possible to access or change the position of the XML data by accessing an arbitrary position. Furthermore, by automatically generating the XML data structure definition table, a series of processing relating to the subsequent operation button generation can be effectively performed, and further, by automatically generating the button generation source data table, the XML Data operation buttons can be automatically generated.

The button information is included in an element extracted from the XML data corresponding to the data unit. When there is an element to be excluded from the element, the element to be excluded corresponds to the data unit from the XML data. It is preferred to have an exclusion instance that is designated to be excluded from the retrieved element .
Thereby, it is possible to meet the need to exclude some target instances from the analysis target by the XML button.

The XML button displayed on the display device is used, for example, to extract data corresponding to the individual button selected by the user from the button generation source data table.
As a result, the information held in the XML data can be extracted simply by allowing the user to select the XML button.

According to the present invention, the following effects can be enjoyed.
(1) Since the operation buttons can be automatically generated directly from the XML data, the user can easily search, analyze and utilize the XML data.
(2) If record data composed of fields represented by CSV format data is used, the hierarchical structure cannot be expressed by this data. Since XML data can express a hierarchical structure, it is possible to recognize this, extract arbitrary data from the hierarchical data, and automatically generate operation buttons.

  (3) When an operation button is automatically generated from record data composed of fields, the number of fields and the position (arrangement order) in the record are fixed, so all data must have the same configuration. . For this reason, it is necessary to prepare including a useless field (blank) such as a large number of data in a field having no corresponding value. In XML data, for example, any element or attribute can be omitted or the order of appearance can be changed within the range allowed by the schema (description of the schema definition part of the XML data structure definition table in the present invention). XML data operation buttons can be automatically generated.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
The computer system for implementing the present invention, that is, the hardware of the button system for XML data, mainly comprises a central processing unit 10, a storage unit 12, a display unit 14, and an input unit 16, as shown in FIG. Yes. The display device 14 serves as an output user interface, and the input device 16 serves as an input user interface. The user uses the display device 14 and the input device 16 to send a command to the XML data button system through an application (XML data button processing program) described later.

  As shown in FIG. 2, the XML data button system software generates an XML document as shown in FIG. 2 in order to automatically generate operation buttons (hereinafter referred to as XML buttons) based on data described in XML format (XML data). The XML parsing function 20 has the ability to expand the storage device in a form that is easy to use, such as referencing and updating the contents, and to query the information held by the XML with respect to external functions, and the input XML (input XML) Structure that has the ability to grasp the contents using the capabilities of the XML parsing function 20 and automatically determine the schema, set how to make the input XML into operation buttons, and save them as an XML data structure definition table Data for generating an operation button from the input XML based on the information possessed by the management function 22 and the XML data structure definition table A button generation source data generation function 24 having the ability to extract and store in the button generation source data table, and an operation button (hereinafter referred to as an XML button) including a button class and an individual button from the button generation source data table are displayed. The button generation function 26 and the button function 28 having the ability to extract information held in the input XML simply by allowing the user to select the displayed XML button are configured.

  An information processing apparatus and a program having the XML parsing function 20, the structure management function 22, the button generation source data generation function 24, the button generation function 26, and the button function 28 are collectively referred to as an XML data button system.

  The button system for XML data exposes an external interface for using each function, and the application (XML data button processing program) 30 uses the interface to link the XML data based on each function. An XML button is automatically generated, and a processing environment in which the user analyzes and utilizes XML data by selecting the button is provided.

  The application 30 stands between the XML data button system and the user, transmits the user's request to each function of the XML data button system, indicates the processing status of each function to the user, and performs the button operation of the XML button. As a result, it is a program that performs effective processing for a specific application for the user. Hereinafter, an application (XML data button processing program) 30 that provides a processing environment is simply referred to as an application.

  In FIG. 2, an arrow from one function to another is shown. A solid arrow indicates that the underlying function uses the previous function directly. An arrow with a broken line indicates that the root function depends indirectly on the previous function, such as referring to data created by the previous function. Hereinafter, an overview of each function will be described first.

  The XML parsing function 20 analyzes the input XML data (input XML), expands the contents into an XML data table, and responds to an inquiry about the contents of the input XML from other functions while referring to the XML data table. Here, the XML data table holds arbitrary elements and attributes constituting the XML, mutual relationships between arbitrary elements and attributes, and the XML parsing function provides an access capability to the data table to other functions.

  Since the structure management function 22 and the button generation source data generation function 24 use the ability of the XML parsing function 20 to refer to the input XML in the process until the operation button is generated, it is an indispensable component of the present invention. Although it is a function, the XML parsing function 20 itself is not the subject of the present invention. If it has such a capability, it can be replaced by a popular XML parser.

  The structure management function 22 generates and manages an “XML data structure definition table”. The XML data structure definition table includes a “schema definition section” in which a schema language is described, and a “button information section” in which information (hereinafter referred to as an “XML button conversion condition”) when the input XML is used as an operation button is described. Divided. The structure management function 22 automatically determines the schema of the input XML by using the XML parsing function 20 and stores the result in the schema definition unit. In addition, the schema automatically determined via the application 30 is shown to the user, and the schema definition section is updated by allowing the user to adjust the schema as necessary. Furthermore, the ability to show the user the schema stored in the schema definition part via the application 30, allow the user to specify the element that becomes the “data unit” when creating an operation button, and save the result in the button information part Have.

  The button generation source data generation function 24 performs processing by regarding the input XML as a set of data having a specific structure. The data unit indicates the specific structure, and one instance of the data unit is designated as “target instance”. " By determining the data unit, the input XML can be regarded as a set of target instances. The structure management function 22 has a capability of allowing the user to designate an “excluded instance” via the application and save the result in the button information part in order to remove from the target instance those that are not to be converted into XML buttons in the input XML.

  Although what designates which data value related to the input XML is output to the button generation source data table is “extraction target”, the structure management function 22 further sets the extraction target to the user via the application 30. Have the ability to specify and save the result in the button information section. Of the descendant elements or ancestor elements in the data unit, those having a data value to be output to the button generation source data table or attributes having the data value to be output belonging to the element can be extracted. There are two types of extraction targets: “buttonization target” which is output to the button generation source data table and at the same time is converted to an XML button, and “reference target” which is not output to the button generation source data table and is not to be converted to an XML button. .

  The button generation source data generation function 24 generates a “button generation source data table”. The button generation source data table has a data structure for passing to the button generation function 26, and is realized by a table including a set of records including fields.

  The button generation source data generation function 24 starts the process of generating the button generation source data table from the input XML in accordance with the contents described in the button information section included in the XML data structure definition table. All the candidate target instances that are the entities of the data unit defined in (1) are extracted from the input XML. Subsequently, those corresponding to the excluded instances defined in the button information part are excluded from the target instance candidates, and the final target instance is determined.

  Next, the button generation source data generation function 24 starts generation of a record that is actual data of the button generation source data table, and one extraction target specified in the button information section is the field 1 of the table. Corresponds to each. If there are a plurality of extraction targets specified in the button information part, the data is extracted by generating data while maintaining the parent-child relationship in the input XML to be extracted, and the field value of each record is determined. When the extraction targets related to all target instances are taken out, records are generated, and field values are determined, the button generation source data generation function 24 completes the generation of the button generation source data table.

  The button generation function 26 generates and displays an XML button. The XML button is an operation button that is automatically generated by the button generation function 26 based on the button generation source data table generated by the button generation source data generation function 24. The operation buttons include “button class” and “ It consists of “individual buttons”. The button class has a button class name, and a field generated as a button object among the fields of the button generation source data table corresponds to the button class. The “individual button” belongs to a button class, and a unique value appearing in a field corresponding to the button class in the button generation source data table is an individual button, and the value is an individual button name. Each individual button stores which record in the button generation source data table is generated. The button class is displayed by the button generation function in a form in which individual buttons belonging to the button class are grouped.

  The button function 28 provides the ability to extract data in the input XML in accordance with the selection status by simply selecting a displayed individual button. Since the selected individual button stores which record in the button generation source data table is generated, the button function 28 can extract data required by the user from the button generation source data table. . The extracted data can be freely used by the application 30. The record of the button generation source data table is specified by the individual button selection. However, since the button generation source data table includes a field generated from a reference object that is not converted to a button, the application 30 refers to these references. Can also be done.

  That is, as shown in FIG. 3A, the XML parsing function 20 receives the XML data to be buttoned as the input XML 32, analyzes the input XML 32, and develops the contents in the XML data table 34. The XML parsing function 20 once expands the input XML 32 into the XML data table 34, as shown in FIG. 3B, referring to the XML data table 34, the contents of the input XML 32 from the external function 36 at any time. You can respond to inquiries about and update the content.

  The structure management function 22 receives the input XML, and generates an XML data structure definition table including a schema definition section that holds information that automatically identifies the structure of the input XML, and a button information section that holds an XML button conversion condition. . In the button system for XML data, the structure management function 22 uses an XML parsing function 20 as shown in FIG. 2 in order to refer to the contents of the input XML.

  The button generation source data generation function 24 receives the input XML and the XML data structure definition table, and generates a button generation source which is data necessary for making the input XML into an XML button according to the contents of the XML data structure definition table. This is a function for generating a data table, and generates a button generation source data table, which is a set of records composed of fields. In the button system for XML data, the button generation source data generation function 24 refers to the contents of the input XML and requires the XML data structure definition table generated by the structure management function 22, so as shown in FIG. The XML parsing function 20 is used and depends on the structure management function 22.

  The button generation function 26 receives a button generation source data table as an input, generates an XML button based on the content, and displays it on the display device. In the button system for XML data, the button generation function 26 requires the button generation source data table generated by the button generation source data generation function 24. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 2, the button generation source data generation function 24.

The button function 28 receives button selection information by the user as an input, updates the display of the XML button according to the content, and extracts information of the button generation source data table. In the button system for XML data, the button function 28 requires the XML button generated by the button generation function 26, and refers to the button generation source data table generated by the button generation source data generation function 24. FIG. As shown in FIG. 4, the button generation function 26 and the button generation source data generation function 24 depend.
The contents of the input XML are written in one electronic file and stored in the storage device. Table 1 shows an example of the input XML used in the embodiment of the present invention. Hereinafter, description will be given with reference to this input XML.

  The example shown in Table 1 records the sales performance of a salesperson of a certain food company. Hereinafter, it is assumed that the input XML shown in Table 1 is “business results.xml” and is stored in the storage device of the computer. In this example, the XML declaration is omitted. In addition, when a specific part in XML is designated in the following, notation according to the XPath notation is used.

  From the “employee” element that appears first in the input XML “business results.xml” shown in Table 1, the information of the employee can be read as follows. The results for the name “Risa Nakamura” and employee number “43001” are “Region =“ Kanagawa ”, Period =“ April 2006 ”, Amount =“ 2,500,000 ””, and “Region =“ Saitama ” Period = “April 2006”, Amount = “5,800,000” ”,“ Region = “Saitama”, Period = “May 2006”, Amount = “6,100,000” ”. Also, looking at the elements of the ancestor hierarchy of the “employee” element and their attributes, it can be seen that they belong to the “confectionery sales department” (organization hierarchy 2) of the “food business department” (organization hierarchy 1).

  Similarly, from the “employee” element appearing at the end of the input XML “business results.xml” shown in Table 1, the information of the employee can be read as follows. The record for the name “Miyuki Yokoyama” and employee number “41294” is “Region =“ Kanagawa ”, Period =“ May 2006 ”, Amount =“ 3,900,000 ””, “Food Division” (Organizational Level 1 ).

  The input XML “business results.xml” shown in Table 1 has a structure as shown in FIG. The notation in FIG. 4 is as follows. Among the squares, the left side that is not painted black represents an element, and the left side that is painted black represents an attribute. A solid arrow indicates that elements are connected to each other, and an element at the base of the arrow has an element at the tip of the arrow as a child. A solid line arrow is accompanied by a number or an asterisk (*). When a number is attached, the parent element indicates that the number of child elements at the tip of the arrow is indicated by the number. When an asterisk is attached, it indicates that the parent element has an arbitrary number of zero or more child elements at the end of the arrow. An arrow with a broken line connects an element and an attribute, and an element at the root of the arrow has an attribute at the tip of the arrow. An element whose name is written in italics has character content.

  As shown in FIG. 4, the top-level element “business results” has an arbitrary “organization hierarchy <n>” as a child element. The element “organization hierarchy <n>” has a recursive structure, has an arbitrary number of “organization hierarchy <n>” and one “employee list” as child elements, and has “name” as an attribute. Here, “<n>” is regarded as a variable determined according to the depth of the appearing hierarchy. “Organization hierarchy <n>” appearing as a child element of the “business performance” element becomes “Organization hierarchy 1”, and “Organization hierarchy <n>” appearing as a child element of “Organization hierarchy 1” becomes “Organization hierarchy 2”. Represents that. The element “employee list” has an arbitrary number of “employees” as child elements. The element “employee” has one “name”, “employee number”, and “result list” as child elements. The element “results list” has an arbitrary number of “results” as child elements. The element “actual result” has one “period” and “amount” as child elements, and “region” as an attribute.

  Although not shown in FIG. 4, it is assumed that there are the following restrictions. The attribute in “// organization hierarchy <n> / @ name” and the value of the element in “// employee / name” are arbitrary character strings. The value of the element in “// Employee number” and the value of the element in “// Amount” are integers. The attribute in “// actual / @ region” takes the name of the region where the sales occurred as a value. The value of the element in “// period” is a date character string representing the year and month.

  In the following description, when the input XML, the XML data structure definition table, and the button generation source data table are illustrated, the legends shown in FIG. 5 are used. 5A shows the input XML 32, FIG. 5B shows the XML data structure definition table 40, and FIG. 5C shows the button generation source data table 42.

  FIG. 6 shows a basic sequence from the input XML to the generation and display of the XML button. In FIG. 6, a sequence after the user starts the application 30 is expressed. The notation in FIG. 6 is as follows.

  A vertical broken line indicates a section in which a function (or user) located at the top of the broken line is alive. It is assumed that time advances from the top to the bottom of the broken line. A vertically long rectangle on the broken line represents a section in which the function is actually operating (hereinafter referred to as an active section). An arrow extending from the active section of one function to the active section of another function indicates that the root function uses the previous function, and describes how to use the function under the arrow. When the legend diagram of the data shown in FIG. 5 is added to the arrow, this indicates that the data is required when the function is used. The arrow that appears above indicates that the event occurs earlier in time. Details of each function will be described later. Here, a basic sequence from generation to display of an XML button will be described with reference to FIG.

(1) The user first passes the input XML 32 to the application 30 in order to create an XML data structure definition table.
(2) Upon receiving the input XML 32 from the user, the application 30 requests the structure management function 22 to automatically generate a schema definition part of the XML data structure definition table. At this time, the input XML 32 received from the user is passed to the structure management function 22. The structure management function 22 automatically generates a schema definition part of an XML data structure definition table from the received input XML 32. At this time, in order to refer to the contents of the input XML 32, the XML parsing function 20 is used at any time, but is omitted in FIG. When the schema definition unit is automatically generated by the structure management function 22, the application 30 displays the definition information on the display device.

(3) Based on the information displayed on the display device, the user instructs the application 30 to adjust the schema definition unit using the input device as necessary. In addition, the user also instructs the application 30 to specify the buttoning condition using the input device.
(4) The application 30 transmits the instruction received from the user to the structure management function 22, and the structure management function 22 updates the schema definition unit according to the adjustment request. In addition, the structure management function 22 saves the contents transmitted from the user in the button information part of the XML data structure definition table, and the XML data structure definition table is completed. When the XML data structure definition table is completed, user settings necessary for generating the XML button are completed.

(5) The user passes the input XML 32 and the corresponding XML data structure definition table 40 to the application 30 and requests button display.
(6) The application 30 passes the input XML 32 and the XML data structure definition table 40 received from the user to the button generation source data generation function 24 in order to create a button generation source data table necessary for button display. Request to generate a source data table for button generation. The button generation source data generation function 24 automatically generates a button generation source data table from the received input XML 32 and the XML data structure definition table 40. At this time, in order to refer to the contents of the input XML 32, the XML parsing function 20 is used at any time, but is omitted in FIG.

  (7) When the button generation source data table is completed, the application 30 next passes the button generation source data table 42 to the button generation function 26 to request button generation. The button generation function 26 automatically generates an XML button from the received button generation source data table 42 and displays it on the display device.

(8) When the generation and display of the XML button is completed, the user operates the displayed XML button with the input device.
(9) The application 30 re-displays the XML button according to the button operation by the user while using the button function 28.

The application 30 provides the user with an environment that provides a secondary effect in response to the XML button operation, but is outside the scope of the present invention and will not be discussed further.
FIG. 6 shows a basic sequence in a case where the user requests processing of each function of the XML data button system using the application 30. Each function will be described in detail below.

1. XML Parsing Function When the XML parsing function 20 receives the XML to be buttoned as the input XML 32 as shown in FIG. 3A, the XML parsing function 20 analyzes the input XML 32 and develops the contents in the XML data table 34. As shown in FIG. 3B, in order for the XML parsing function 20 to respond to an inquiry about the contents of the input XML 32 from the external function 36, the XML data table 34 includes the interrelationships of all elements and attributes constituting the input XML 32. And information such as positional relationships are stored. The XML parsing function 20 stores information such as the number of child elements of an arbitrary element, a child element list of an arbitrary element, an attribute list belonging to an arbitrary element, an arbitrary attribute value belonging to an arbitrary element, a list of elements having an arbitrary name, and the like. It can be obtained by referring to the data table 34 and can respond to similar inquiries from other functions.

  As shown in FIG. 3B, the XML parsing function 20 changes the value of any element or attribute in the input XML 32 by referring to the XML data table 34, or adds a new value to any element or attribute. It has editing capabilities such as adding elements and attributes, and other functions can freely edit existing XML or create new XML using these capabilities.

  As long as it has the above capabilities, the XML parsing function 20 can be substituted by a popular XML parser. The present invention differs from a normal XML parser in that the configuration (element) of the XML data table 34 is specified by focusing on the use of XML buttons.

  Next, a method for realizing the XML data table will be described with reference to FIGS. XML can be regarded as a tree (tree structure) having elements as nodes and document elements as roots. The attribute depends on the node representing the element, but can be regarded as a node independent of the tree structure.

  For example, the input XML “business results.xml” shown in Table 1 can be expressed by a tree as shown in FIG. However, in FIG. 7, only the elements up to the upper three layers including the document elements are displayed, and the rest are omitted. The rectangle shown in FIG. 7 is a node, and the element node is connected to the child element node by a solid line. When an element has an attribute, it is connected to the attribute node by a broken line. The top node “business results” in FIG. 7 represents the document element of “business results.xml”. The “business performance” element has one child element of “organization hierarchy 1”. In FIG. 7, the relationship is shown by connecting the nodes representing the respective elements with a solid line. Since the “organization hierarchy 1” element has a “name” attribute, the relationship is shown by connecting to a node representing the attribute with a broken line. It is also shown that the “name” attribute has a value of “food division”. Furthermore, the “organization hierarchy 1” element has “organization element 2” having a value of “confectionery sales department” as a “name” attribute and “organization element 2” having a value of “health food sales department” as a “name” attribute. , And three child elements of the “employee list” are connected by a solid line.

  As a data structure for managing the input XML in a tree structure, a node structure shown in FIG. 8A and a node list structure shown in FIG. 8B can be considered. The node structure is a data structure representing a node of the tree. In the example shown in the figure, (1) type (element or attribute), (2) a character string representing the name of the node, and (3) a character string representing the value of the node. , (4) a node list structure representing a child element list, (5) a node list structure representing an attribute list, and (6) a reference to a node structure representing a parent element. The node list structure is a variable-length data structure that represents references to a plurality of nodes. In the illustrated example, the node list structure has an integer that represents the number of nodes to be referenced and references to the nodes as many as the number of nodes.

  For example, the document element “sales result” of “sales result.xml” shown in FIG. 7 is represented by the node structure shown in FIG. 8A, as shown in FIG. That is, since the document element is an element, the type is “element”. The name of the node is “business results” which is the element name. Since there is no character content, the value is empty. It has a node list structure that represents one child element, and has a node list structure that represents zero attributes. Since it is the root, the reference to the parent element node structure is empty.

  As shown in FIG. 9B, the node list structure representing the child elements of the document element has one child element of the document element, so the number is 1, and a reference to the node structure representing one child element is made. Have. The reference to the unique node structure indicates the node (node 1) representing the unique child element of the document element (the “organization hierarchy 1” element whose “name” attribute is “Food Division”). As shown in FIG. 9C, the node list structure indicating the child elements of the attribute has zero number and has no reference to the node structure.

  As shown in FIG. 9D, the node structure representing the only child element of the document element has a type “element”, a node name “organization hierarchy 1”, an empty value, and three children. It has a node list structure that represents an element and a node list structure that represents one attribute. Since the parent element is a document element, it has a reference to the node structure representing the element.

  If the XML data table is realized as data composed of a set of the node structure and the node list structure as described above, all information included in the input XML can be obtained. Further, by changing the values of the node structure and the node list structure, or by newly generating the structure, it is possible to change the contents of XML or create a new XML.

2. Structure management function The structure management function 22 generates and updates an XML data structure definition table. The XML data structure definition table is data describing the structure of the input XML and the XML button conversion condition. The structure management function 22 reads the input XML, analyzes the structure, and automatically generates a schema definition part of the XML data structure definition table. For example, the XML data structure definition table may be described in XML. In this example, in addition to reading the input XML, an XML parsing function 20 is required to generate an XML data structure definition table. An automatic generation method of the schema definition unit will be described later.

  Hereinafter, when the structure management function 22 receives “sales results.xml” as the input XML, the XML data structure definition table that is automatically generated is stored as a file “sales results.xdst” in the storage device, and the XML data A case where the structure definition table is described in XML will be described as an example. Table 2 shows the structure of the XML structure definition table.

  As shown in Table 2, the document element has an “XML data structure definition table”. As the child elements, a “schema definition part” in which information on the schema definition is described in the descendant element or attribute and a “button information part” in which the information on the button information is described in the descendant element or attribute are arranged. Details of the “schema definition part” element and the “button information part” element will be described later.

  The schema definition unit has a role as an XML schema language for defining the structure of the input XML. That is, information such as what element each element appearing in the input XML has as a child, what value it takes, what attribute it has, and what value the attribute takes is schema Described in the definition part. The XML data button system determines that different input XMLs have the same structure as long as the XML conforms to the syntax described in the schema definition section.

  The process in which the structure management function 22 analyzes the structure and automatically generates the XML schema based on the input XML “business results.xml” shown in Table 1 with reference to FIGS. I will explain it.

  The structure management function 22 determines the continuity of element structures as the first stage of automatic schema generation. Judgment of continuity of element structure means that two or more elements (sibling elements) having a common parent element determine whether or not the structures are identical to each other. It is determined that there is a possibility that any number of elements may appear continuously. Here, if two or more elements have the same element name, have the same name attribute, and have descendant elements, if the same name has descendant elements and attributes belonging to them in the same order, the 2 More than one element is considered the same structure. Whether or not the structures are the same is determined in order from an element close to a leaf in the tree representation of the XML data table.

  In this example, the input XML “business results.xml” shown in Table 1 is expanded in the XML data table 34 by the XML parsing function 20 as shown in FIG. In the XML data table, the part of the first “employee” element appearing in “business results.xml” is expanded as shown in FIG. For ease of reference in the following explanation, in FIG. 10, a character string (square brackets and their contents) representing an XPath predicate is described in the “employee / result list / result” element.

  In FIG. 10, “employee / result list / result [1] / period” and “employee / result list / result [1] / money” are sibling elements, but the element names are different, so they are not the same structure. Similarly, the two child elements of “employee / result list / result [2]” do not have the same structure. Similarly, the two child elements of “employee / result list / result [3]” do not have the same structure. “Employee / Achievement list / Achievement [1]”, “Employee / Achievement list / Achievement [2]” and “Employee / Achievement list / Achievement [3]” are sibling elements and have the same element name “Actual”. And have the same name attribute “region”, and have child elements “period” and “money” with the same name in the same order, and thus have the same structure. Therefore, it is determined that there may be an arbitrary number of “actual” elements continuously as children of the “employee / actual list”. “Employee / name”, “employee / employee number”, and “employee / result list” are sibling elements of each other, but the element names are different, so they do not have the same structure.

  FIG. 11 shows the result of determining the continuity of the element structure for all “business results.xml” in this way. FIG. 11 shows a schema, and the schema at this point has the following properties, for example. One “organization level 1 (/ business result / organization level 1)” appears as a child element of the document element “business result (/ business result)”, and “business result” has no other child element. “Organization hierarchy 1” has a “name” attribute, and “organization hierarchy 2 (/ business results / organization hierarchy 1 / organization hierarchy 2)” may appear continuously as child elements. The “organization hierarchy 2” element has a “name” attribute.

The schema shown in FIG. 11 can be regarded as a general tree (tree structure), and this tree is called an element structure tree. In the element structure tree, each element constituting the tree is a node, and the attribute is not regarded as a node. The leftmost (first) node is the root. A node having no child node is called a leaf. Specifically, in FIG. 11, the route is the “/ business results” element. Since “// organization hierarchy 1 / @ name” and “// organization hierarchy 2 / actual record / @ region” are attributes, they are not nodes in the element structure tree. “// Organization hierarchy 1 / Employee list / Employee / Name”, “// Organization hierarchy 2 // Period”, etc. are leaves.
The subsequent automatic schema generation is performed with reference to the element structure tree, not the XML data table tree.

  The structure management function 22 determines the structural identity between elements appearing under different elements as the second stage of automatic schema generation. Judgment of structural identity between elements that appear under different elements is to determine whether the structures of elements that are not siblings are the same. If they are the same, the redundancy of the same part is omitted from the element structure tree. That is. Here, if two or more elements of interest have the same element name, the same name attribute, and if they have child elements, they have the same name descendant elements and attributes belonging to them in the same order The two or more elements are regarded as the same structure. Whether or not the structures are the same is determined in order from the element closest to the leaf in the tree representation of the element structure tree shown in FIG. 11, and the element that is a leaf and has no attribute is excluded from the determination target.

  For example, in the element structure tree shown in FIG. 11, “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list // period”, “// organization hierarchy 2 // employee / name”, etc. are elements that are leaves and have no attributes. Remove from judgment. The first judgment target elements are “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list // actual record” and “// organization hierarchy 2 // actual record”. Both have the element name “Actual”, each “Actual” element has two child elements with the same name “Period” and “Amount”, and each “Actual” element has the same name “Region” Has attributes. Therefore, the structure management function 22 determines that “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list // actual record” and “// organization hierarchy 2 // actual record” have the same structure.

  FIG. 12 illustrates a result of determining that the structure below the “actual” element is the same in “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list // actual” and “// organization hierarchy 2 // actual”. In FIG. 12A, both “actual results” element parts are indicated by “broken line: [structure 1]” with a broken line, which is an external structure “[structure 1]”. This means that the element name is “actual result”. Since both are “results: [structure 1]”, they indicate the same structure and the same name. As shown in FIG. 12 (b), [Structure 1] is a route shown in FIG. 12 (a) by a tree separately set with a double-line rectangle represented as “[Structure 1]” as a root node. Is maintained independently of the element structure tree of the document element “business results”. A tree set separately in this way is called an element structure sub-tree. Also, extracting an element structure subtree from the element structure tree is called normalization.

  Hereinafter, a node that refers to an element structure subtree such as “actual result: [structure 1]” illustrated in FIG. 12A is regarded as a leaf element having no attribute, and a structure between elements that appear under different elements. We will proceed with the determination of identity. Therefore, the “actual result: [structure 1]” is excluded from the structural identity judgment target, and focusing on the one closest to the leaf, “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list // actual result list” And “// organization hierarchy 2 // result list”. These elements have the same name in the “result list”, have the same structure “result: [structure 1]” as child elements, and have no attributes. Therefore, the structure management function 22 determines that “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list // result list” and “// organization hierarchy 2 // result list” have the same structure.

  FIG. 13 shows the result of judging that the structure below the “actual list” element is the same in “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list // actual list” and “// organization hierarchy 2 // actual list”. It is. That is, the element structure tree of the document element “business results” shown in FIG. 13A refers to the element structure subtree of the root node [structure 2] shown in FIG. The element structure subtree refers to the element structure subtree of [Structure 1] shown in FIG. The structure management function 22 continues the process shown in FIGS. 11 to 13 regarding the determination of structural identity between elements appearing under different elements until the same structure cannot be found. Finally, the structure management function 22 normalizes the data structure of the input XML “business results.xml” to the state shown in FIG. 14 while replacing the same structure with the element structure subtree and its reference.

  As a final process of normalization, attention is paid to elements having attributes or non-leaf among the nodes of the element structure tree, and all of the nodes in the order from the leaf are converted into element structure subtree references. Further, the structure management function 22 converts the root node (document element) of the element structure tree into an element structure subtree reference, and completes the process of automatically generating the XML schema.

  Specifically, FIG. 14 shows a state in which the process of replacing the same structure with the element structure subtree reference is completed. Here, “organization hierarchy 2” and “organization hierarchy 1” shown in FIG. Are the last target elements of normalization in this order. That is, these elements refer to the element structure subtree of the root node [structure 4] shown in FIG. 14B, and the element structure subtree of the root node [structure 4] is shown in FIG. Reference is made to the element structure subtree of structure 3]. The element structure subtree of the root node [structure 3] refers to the element structure subtree of [structure 2] shown in FIG. 14 (d), and the element structure subtree of the root node [structure 2] is shown in FIG. 14 (e). Reference is made to the element structure subtree of [Structure 1] shown.

  Furthermore, if the “business results”, which is the root node of the element structure tree, is also referred to as the element structure subtree, the result is as shown in FIG. 15, and this completes a series of processes for automatically generating an XML schema definition section. That is, the “business results” shown in FIG. 15A are sequentially converted into a total of seven element structure subtree references shown in FIGS. 15A to 15H.

  Table 3 shows an example of the schema definition part (stored in the XML format) of the XML data structure definition table automatically generated from the state shown in FIG. 15 where the normalization of the data structure has been completed. In this embodiment, the schema definition part is expressed by a grammar similar to XML Schema 1.0, and parts different from the grammar of XML Schema 1.0 will be described each time.

  Under the “Schema definition part” element shown in Table 3, “element”, “complexType”, “sequence” and “attribute” elements appear. These four types of elements include their attributes. , Has the same structure and meaning as that of XML Schema 1.0. However, “id” appearing as an element attribute of “element”, “complexType”, and “attribute” is unique to the present invention. The “id” attribute is used when referring to the contents of the schema definition part from the button information part of the XML data structure definition table, and its value is unique in the schema definition part. Specifically, the “element” element appears first in the child of the “schema definition part” element of the XML data structure definition table automatically generated from the input XML “business results.xml”. This corresponds to the element structure tree in FIG.

  Further, the elements appearing as children of the “schema definition part” element are all “complexType” except the “element”, but these are the seven elements shown in FIGS. 15B to 15H. Corresponds to each element structure subtree of. Among the seven element structure subtrees, the element structure subtree of the root node “[structure 7]” shown in FIG. 15B is a child element of “schema definition section” and has an attribute “name =“ structure 7 ””. Corresponds to "complexType". The correspondence relationship between other element structure subtrees and “complexType” which is a child element of “schema definition part” is the same.

  The “complexType” element defines the structure indicated by the “name” attribute. The “element” element specifies that the element having the name indicated by the “name” attribute appears in the structure indicated by the “type” attribute. By specifying the “name” attribute of the “complexType” element as the value of the “type” attribute, the structure of the “complexType” can be referred to. Furthermore, a simple type (“string” (character string), “decimal” (number), etc.) built in XML Schema 1.0 can be specified as the value of the “type” attribute. The “complexType” element has a “sequence” element as a child. Furthermore, it has an “element” element as its child, which is the same as the “element” described above. That is, it is specified that the element having the name indicated by the “name” attribute appears in the structure indicated by the “type” attribute as a child of the structure indicating the “complexType”. “Sequence” is specified to limit the order of appearing elements. “ComplexType” may further have an “attribute” element as a child, which means that the name attribute indicated by the “name” attribute appears in the structure indicated by the “type” attribute. To express. A simple type built in XML Schema 1.0 can be specified as the value of the “type” attribute.

  Specifically, the “complexType” element having “ct1” in the “id” attribute and the attribute thereof indicate that “the structure of“ structure 7 ”is defined here”. The “element” element with “el1” in the “id” attribute and its attribute indicate that “the element named“ business performance ”having the structure of“ structure 7 ”appears”. A structure 7 ″ indicates that the structure of the “complexType” is referred to. This corresponds to the fact that the root node “Sales Results: [Structure 7]” of the element structure tree refers to the element structure subtree “[Structure 7]” in FIG. The “sequence” element and “element” element appearing as descendants of the “complexType” and their attributes are “name of“ organization hierarchy 1 ”having“ structure 6 ”in the complexType (“ structure 7 ”). The element appears ". In FIG. 15B, the child node “organization hierarchy 1: [structure 6]” of the element structure sub-tree having “[structure 7]” as the root node in another element structure sub-tree “[structure 6]”. Corresponds to the reference. Furthermore, “complexType” having “ct7” in the “id” attribute means that “the complexType (“ structure 1 ”) has an element named“ period ”having a string (string) value and a decimal (number) value. An element named “Amount” having “appears” appears in this order, and an attribute named “Region” having a string value is added to the complexType ”.

  Among the “element” elements appearing in the schema definition section, there are those having “minOccurs” attribute and “maxOccurs” attribute, such as those having “el3” in the “id” attribute. In the input XML, the lower limit and the upper limit of the number of occurrences of the element defined by the “element” are designated. If a number is specified for the value, that number is specified as the lower or upper limit value. If “unbounded” is specified as the value of “maxOccurs”, the upper limit of the number of appearances is not specified. That is, “element” having the attribute “minOccurs =“ 0 ”maxOccurs =“ unbounded ”” represents “appears an arbitrary number of times”.

When the automatic generation of the schema definition unit by the structure management function 22 is completed, the application displays the structure of the generated schema on the display device. The user can make adjustments to the automatically generated schema as necessary while viewing the structure of the displayed schema. Adjustment here refers to the specification of omissibility, the upper and lower limits of the number of appearances, the order of appearance, etc. for any element or attribute. The user can adjust the schema more flexibly. You can define a simple schema. When the structure management function 22 receives a schema adjustment request from a user via an application, the structure management function 22 applies it to the schema definition section of the XML data structure definition table. Regarding the adjustment items, the upper limit and the lower limit can be expressed by the “minOccurs” attribute and the “maxOccurs” attribute of the “element” element in the schema definition section. In addition, specification of omission possibility and appearance order is also XML
Can be expressed in Schema 1.0 format.

  In the schema definition part automatically generated by the structure management function 22, according to FIG. 15A, the child elements of [Structure 7] are one organizational hierarchy 1: [Structure 6]. Here, it is assumed that the user looks at the display device and instructs the structure management function 22 through the application to allow an arbitrary number of “organization hierarchy 1” elements as child elements of [structure 7]. In the schema definition part automatically generated by the structure management function 22, “decimal” representing a numerical value is designated as the type of the “employee number” element having “el8” as the id attribute value in XML expression. Here, it is assumed that the user looks at the display device and instructs the structure management function 22 via the application to change the type of the “employee number” element to a character string. Then, the structure management function 22 updates the two “complexType” elements in the XML expression of the schema definition section as shown in Table 4, and the application updates the contents of the display device to the latest.

Thus, automatic generation of the schema definition part of the XML data structure definition table and adjustment by the user are completed.
The button information part of the XML structure definition table shown in Table 2 holds the XML button conversion condition of the input XML. Buttoning conditions include “data unit”, “excluded instance”, and “extraction target”, which are specified by the user via the application. Among the buttoning conditions, the data unit and the extraction target are specified from the contents of the schema definition, and the excluded instance is specified from the contents of the input XML. Hereinafter, “data unit”, “excluded instance”, and “extraction target” will be described.

2.1 Data Unit The button generation source data generation function 24, which will be described later, performs processing by regarding the input XML as a set of data having a specific structure, and the data unit indicates this specific structure. A data unit can be “complexType” or “element” in the schema definition section. In the input XML, an actual element corresponding to a data unit is referred to as a “target instance”. For example, when a structure having “ct3” in the “id” attribute is specified as a data unit in the schema definition part generated from the input XML “business results.xml”, the target instance of the input XML is “// organization hierarchy 2 [@ Name = 'confectionery sales department'] "and" // organization hierarchy 2 [@ name = 'health food sales department'] ".

In the following description, it is assumed that a structure having “ct5” in the “id” attribute is specified as a data unit by the user in the XML expression of the schema definition unit generated from the input XML “business results.xml”. Then, the target instances are “// employee [name = 'Risa Nakamura']”, “// employee [name = 'Hiroshi Yamamoto']”, “// employee [name = 'Takashi Nakata']” and “/ / Employees [name = 'Masato Takahashi'] "and" // Employees [name = 'Miyuki Yokoyama'] ".
The data unit is the most basic of the XML button conversion conditions, and is deeply related to other XML button conversion conditions as described later, and therefore needs to be specified before the other XML button conversion conditions.

2.2 Target instances corresponding to the structure specified as an excluded instance data unit are all those appearing in the input XML at this stage. However, there may be a need to exclude some target instances from the analysis target by the XML button. Such a case is dealt with by specifying an excluded instance. The excluded instance is specified by the XPath for the input XML, and the element corresponding to the XPath is excluded from the target instance.

  For example, in the above-described example, when the user designates a structure having “ct5” as the value of “id” as a data unit, all “employee” elements appearing in “business results.xml” become target instances. However, suppose that you do not want the data of employees directly reporting to the Food Division to be the target instance. In such a case, the excluded instance is designated as XPath “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list / employee”. The elements corresponding to the XPath are “// employee [name = 'Masato Takahashi']” and “// employee [name = 'Miyuki Yokoyama']”, these are the source data table generation for button generation Sometimes removed from the target instance.

2.3 Extraction Target Input Information that specifies which information to be output to the button generation source data table is included in the XML. Of the extraction targets, those that are output to the button generation source data table and simultaneously converted to XML buttons are called “button generation targets”, and those that are output to the button generation source data table and are not to be converted to XML buttons are referred to as “reference targets”. " The extraction target is specified by an element or attribute defined in the schema definition section.

  As an extraction target, any one of an ancestor element of the data unit and its attribute, a descendant element and its attribute, and an element of the data unit itself and its attribute can be designated. However, an element cannot be specified as an extraction target unless it itself has a value.

  For example, when “ct5” is a data unit, the data unit corresponds to [Structure 3] illustrated in FIG. Of the descendant elements of [Structure 3], the “Name” and “Employee number” of the [Structure 3] child element and the “Period” and “Price” of the [Structure 1] child elements that have values Can be. Since none of the ancestor elements of [Structure 3] has a value, the ancestor element cannot be an extraction target. Also, the attribute of [Structure 3] ancestor element or descendant element, “Structure 6” “name”, “Structure 5” “Name”, and “Structure 1” “Region” are extracted. Can be.

  One extraction object corresponds to one field of the button generation source data table. You can also specify the field name when outputting to the button generation source data table. How to output the extraction target to the button generation source data table will be described in the button generation source data generation function.

  The user uses the application, for example, “at2”, “el7”, “at3”, and “at3” as values of the “id” attribute in the XML expression of the schema definition part generated from “business results.xml”. Assume that an element and an attribute having “el11” are designated as buttons, and an element having “el12” as the value of the “id” attribute is designated as a reference subject. At the same time, it is assumed that “affiliation”, “employee name”, “region”, “actual month”, and “money amount” are designated as field names of the respective button generation source data tables to be extracted.

  When the user designates the XML button conversion condition via the application, the structure management function 22 saves the XML button conversion condition in the button information part of the XML data structure definition table. Table 5 shows an example (stored in XML format) of the button information portion of the XML data structure definition table designated for the data of the input XML “business results.xml”.

  As a child of the “button information part” element shown in Table 5, a “data unit” element first appears. By specifying the value of the “id” attribute of each element of the “element” and “complexType” in the schema definition section in the attribute “id” of this element, it is defined that the structure is a data unit. Since “ct5” is designated here, [Structure 3] shown in FIG. 15F is defined as a data unit.

  The “data unit” element has a child element “exclusion instance list”, which plays a role of collecting a plurality of designation of exclusion instance conditions. As children of this element, zero or more “exclusion instance” elements representing the definition of the exclusion instance are arranged. The excluded instance condition is specified in the “Xpath” attribute of the “excluded instance” element. In this example, “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list / employee” is specified as the excluded instance condition.

  As a child of the “button information part” element, an “extraction target list” element appears after the “data unit”, and this plays a role of collecting a plurality of extraction target designations. As a child of this element, one or more “extraction target” elements representing the definition of the extraction target are arranged. In this example, the “extraction target” element has three attributes “type”, “id”, and “fieldName”. The “type” attribute specifies whether the extraction target is a buttonization target or a reference target. Specify “button” for buttonization, and “reference” for reference. In the “id” attribute, an element or attribute representing the extraction target is specified in the structure appearing in the XML expression of the schema definition part. At this time, the “id” of the corresponding element or attribute in the XML expression of the schema definition part is specified. ”Attribute. In the “fieldName” attribute, a field name when the extraction target is output to the button generation source data table is designated. In this case, in the first “extraction target” element, the “type” attribute is “button”, the “id” attribute is “at2”, and the “fieldName” attribute is “affiliation”. The “name” attribute of “structure 5” shown in FIG. 15D is selected, and “affiliation” is designated as the field name when output to the button generation source data table. The same applies to the other “extraction target” elements, and four extraction targets are defined as button targets and one reference target.

  As described above, the user can generate the XML data structure definition table by the structure management function 22 through the application.

3. As shown in FIG. 6, the button generation source data generation function 24 receives the input XML 32 and the corresponding XML data structure definition table 40, and starts generating the button generation source data table. To do. Hereinafter, it is assumed that “sales results.xml” is passed as the input XML 32 and “sales results.xdst” is passed as the corresponding XML data structure definition table 40 by the user via the application 30. The button generation source data generation function 24 extracts all the elements corresponding to the data unit defined in the button information part of the XML data structure definition table from the input XML using the XML parsing function 20, and extracts the elements as target instances. Candidate.

In this example, in the button information part of “business results.xdst”, as shown in Table 5, “ct5”, that is, [Structure 3] shown in FIG.
Is specified as a data unit, and the element indicated by the following XPath having the specified structure in “business results.xml” is extracted.
// Organization level 2 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Risa Nakamura']
// Organization level 2 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Hiroshi Yamamoto']
// Organization level 2 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Takashi Nakata']
// Organization level 1 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Masato Takahashi']
// Organization level 1 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Miyuki Yokoyama']
These five elements are the target instance candidates for the data unit.

Next, the button generation source data generation function 24 removes those specified by the excluded instances in the button information section from the target instance candidates and determines the remaining ones as target instances. In this example, the element that corresponds to the “Xpath” attribute value “// Organization hierarchy 1 / Employee list / Employee” in the “Excluded instance” element that is a child of “Excluded instance list” of “Sales results.xdst” It is removed from the five candidate instance candidates extracted from “Grades.xml”. Among the five target instance candidates, the following elements apply to XPath, which is an excluded instance condition.
// Organization level 1 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Masato Takahashi']
// Organization level 1 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Miyuki Yokoyama']

These two elements are excluded from the target instance candidates in the data unit, and finally the following three elements become target instances.
// Organization level 2 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Risa Nakamura']
// Organization level 2 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Hiroshi Yamamoto']
// Organization level 2 / Employee list / Employee [Name = 'Takashi Nakata']

  When the target instance is determined, the button generation source data generation function 24 generates a button generation source data table based on these target instances. The button generation source data table stores a set of data records composed of fields.

  In the button information part of the XML data structure definition table, one “extraction target” element defined under the “extraction target list” element corresponds to one field of the button generation source data table, and the name of the field is , The value of the attribute “fieldName” of the corresponding “extraction target” element. Further, the order of the “extraction target” elements appearing under the “extraction target list” element is the order of the fields output to the button generation source data table as they are. Furthermore, among the extraction targets, the field corresponding to the reference target is marked at the time of output so that the button generation function can be distinguished from the button conversion target. In the button generation source data table, a field corresponding to a button object is referred to as a “button field”, and a field corresponding to a reference object is referred to as a “reference field”.

  Specifically, the first child element “extraction target” of the “extraction target list” element in “business results.xdst” has “affiliation” specified as the value of the “fieldName” attribute. The field name of the corresponding button generation source data table is “affiliation”. Similarly, four “extraction target” elements appear, and the field names of the button generation source data table are “employee name”, “region”, “actual month”, and “amount”, The fields are determined as shown in the first row shown in Table 6.

  In Table 6, since the “extraction object” that appears last is a reference object, “*” is added to the head of the corresponding “amount” field name so that it can be distinguished from the button object. That is, among the fields of the button generation source data table output as shown in Table 6, “affiliation”, “employee name”, “region”, and “actual month” are buttoned fields, and “amount” is This is a reference field.

  When the field of the button generation source data table is output, the button generation source data generation function next generates a record that is the actual data of the button generation source data table. Prior to that, each extraction in the input XML is performed. In order to reflect the relationship between the objects in the record of the table, the vertical relationship of the extraction objects is determined based on the structure of the schema definition unit corresponding to each extraction object.

  In the unnormalized element structure tree shown in FIG. 11, the attribute is not regarded as a node at the time of automatic generation of the schema definition part, but here, the attribute is regarded as a child node of the element node in which the attribute appears. The distance from the root node to the node corresponding to each extraction target is measured. In FIG. 11, the distance is determined by how many arrows (solid line arrow and broken line arrow) pass from the root node to the node corresponding to the extraction target. When the appearance location is an unspecified extraction target, the one with the longest distance is adopted. Specifically, the first extraction target “at2” in the button information part is expressed as a node of the “name” attribute of the “organization hierarchy 2” element in the element structure tree shown in FIG. The distance is 3 because three arrows (two solid arrows and one dashed arrow) pass from the node. The second extraction target “el7” is a child node (distance 5) of “// organization hierarchy 1 / employee list / employee” and a child node (distance of “// organization hierarchy 2 / employee list / employee”). It appears in two of 4), but since the longer distance is adopted, the distance is 5. Similarly, the third extraction object “at3” has a distance of 7, the fourth extraction object “el11” has a distance of 7, and the fifth extraction object “el12” has a distance of 7.

As described above, when the distance to each extraction target is measured, the upper and lower relations are determined by setting the relatively short distance as “upper”, the longer distance as “lower”, and the same as “same”. . Specifically, the vertical relationship is determined as shown in FIG. In FIG. 16, what appears on the left is represented as a higher level, and what appears on the right is represented as a lower level. As shown in FIG. 16, the extraction target “at2” is higher than all other extraction targets. The extraction object “el7” is lower than the extraction object “at2” and higher than the extraction objects “at3”, “el11”, and “el12”. The extraction objects “at3”, “el11”, and “el12” are the same as each other, and are lower than the extraction objects “at2” and “el7”.
When the button generation source data generation function determines the top / bottom relationship of the extraction target, the button generation source data table starts record generation.

First, the target instance that has already been determined is extracted. Specifically, the first target instance that appears in “Sales Results.xml” is represented by the XPath of “// Organization hierarchy 1 / Organization hierarchy 2 / Employee list / Employee [name = 'Risa Nakamura']” Is an element. Hereinafter, this element is referred to as “target instance of employee“ Risa Nakamura ””. Next, attention is focused on the extraction target appearing at the bottom. If extraction targets appear at the lowest level, they are taken out by combining them in series. The order of taking out in series follows the order of extraction targets specified in the button information section.

  In this example, in the target instance of the employee “Risa Nakamura” of “business results.xml”, the extraction targets that appear at the bottom are “at3”, “el11”, which are three peer extraction targets, as shown in FIG. "And" el12 ". Since the relationships between the peers are in series, the combination of [“Kanagawa”, “April 2006”, “2,500,000”] and the combination of [“Saitama”, “April 2006”, “5,800,000”] [“Saitama”, “May 2006”, “6,100,000”] can be extracted. Next, in order to maintain the relationship in the input XML with respect to the extracted lowest extraction object, the upper extraction object is extracted and added in series to the combination of extraction objects.

Specifically, the top of the three lowest extraction targets of the target instance of employee “Risa Nakamura” is “at2” and “el7” as shown in FIG. In addition to the combination, [“confectionery sales department”, “Risa Nakamura”, “Kanagawa”, “April 2006”, “2,500,000”], [“confectionery sales department”, “Risa Nakamura”, “Saitama” , “April 2006”, “5,800,000”] and [“Confection Sales Department”, “Risa Nakamura”, “Saitama”, “May 2006”, “6,100,000”]. One of these combinations is made to correspond to one record of the button generation source data table. That is, as shown in Table 6 above, three records are generated from the target instance of the employee “Risa Nakamura”.

  When the input XML has a plurality of target instances, a record of the button generation source data table is generated for all second and subsequent target instances in the same manner as in the case of the first target instance. Specifically, four records are generated from the target instance of the employee “Hiroshi Yamamoto” in “Sales Results.xml”, and one record is generated from the target instance of the employee “Takashi Nakata”, as shown in Table 7. In this way, it is stored in the source data table for button generation.

  With the above method, generation of the button generation source data table by the button generation source data generation function is completed, and the button generation source data table shown in Table 7 is stored in the storage device as “business results.table”.

4). Button Generation Function and Button Function As shown in FIG. 6, the application 30 generates the button generation source data table after the button generation source data generation function 24 completes the button generation source data table generation. Pass to function 24 to request generation of XML button. The XML button includes at least “button class” and “individual button” as components. Hereinafter, a process of automatically generating an XML button and an operation procedure of the button will be described.

  The “button class” corresponds to a buttoned field among the fields constituting each record of the button generation source data table, and the name of the field is the button class name. Specifically, when generating an XML button based on the button generation source data table “Sales Results.table” shown in Table 7, four button fields “affiliation”, “employee name”, “region” , And “actual month” correspond to the respective button classes in order, and the button class names are “affiliation”, “employee name”, “region”, and “actual month”, respectively. FIG. 17 shows an image of an XML button generated from the button generation source data table “business results.table” shown in Table 7. In FIG. 17, it is divided vertically into four sections, each corresponding to a button class. There is a character string enclosed in a double frame at the top of the button class, which represents the button class name.

  An “individual button” belongs to a button class and corresponds to a unique data value that appears in the buttoned field of each record of the button generation source data table. Individual buttons belonging to a certain button class are determined by the button generation function as follows. In the button generation source data table, attention is paid to the buttoned field corresponding to the button class. All unique values are extracted from the data appearing in the noted field. An individual button having the extracted value as a caption is generated, and is associated with the button class.

  Specifically, individual buttons belonging to the button class corresponding to the buttoned field “Affiliation” from the button generation source data table “Sales Results.table” shown in Table 7 are displayed in the order of “confectionery”. Sales Department, Confectionery Sales Department, Confectionery Sales Department, Health Food Sales Department, Health Food Sales Department, Health Food Sales Department, Health Food Sales Department, and Health Food Sales Department Therefore, a unique value is taken out from these, and becomes “confectionery sales department” and “health food sales department”. The button generation function generates two individual buttons using these as captions and associates them with the “affiliation” button class. Thus, the generation of the individual buttons belonging to the “affiliation” button class is completed. In the image of the XML button shown in FIG. 17, the leftmost button class is represented as a character string surrounded by a single line under the button class name. Based on the button generation source data table, individual buttons belonging to the button class can be similarly generated for all button fields of each record.

  When creating an individual button, to make it possible to search later from which record in the button generation source data table each individual button was created, a separate area is allocated for the record number, although not shown here. It is preferable to store them in association with individual buttons.

  Specifically, the individual button “Kanagawa” belonging to the button class “Region” generated from the button generation source data table “Sales Results.table” shown in Table 7 is stored in the button generation source data table shown in Table 7. Since the first, fourth and sixth records from the top are generated, the record numbers are stored. Similarly, the individual button “May 2006” belonging to the button class “actual month” is generated from the third, sixth and seventh records from the top of the button generation source data table shown in Table 7. Store those record numbers. The XML buttons generated by the above method are displayed on the display device side by side for each button class. This completes the XML button generation by the button generation function.

  When the generation and display of the XML button is completed by the button generation function, the application waits for a user's selection instruction for the displayed XML button. When the user selects an individual button with the input device, the application transmits the selection information to the button function 28. When the button function 28 receives the selection information of the individual button, the button function 28 marks the record having the same number in the button generation source data table stored in the individual button.

  Specifically, when the individual button “Hiroshi Yamamoto” belonging to the button class “employee name” is selected in the XML button generated from “business results.table”, the button function 28 is associated with the individual button. Mark records that match the stored record numbers 4, 5, 6, and 7. Records marked by the button function can be retrieved at any time.

  That is, by selecting the individual button “Hiroshi Yamamoto”, the user can specify and retrieve the data related to “Hiroshi Yamamoto” from the data held in “Sales Results.xml”. How to utilize the record marked by the button selection is up to the application, but it is not mentioned here.

XML holds hierarchical (structured) data, but it is also conceivable that this hierarchical information can be used effectively when generating an XML button.
Specifies that the extraction target of the button information part of the XML data structure definition table is hierarchized and buttoned, adds hierarchy information to the button generation source data table, automatically generates an XML button, and adds a hierarchy to the display device If the XML button is displayed, this is convenient as a front end of an application that can intuitively manipulate hierarchical data.

  For example, in “business results.xdst”, if the extraction target corresponding to the field name “affiliation” and the generation button generation of the extraction target corresponding to the field name “employee name” are specified, a hierarchy with a hierarchy as shown in FIG. XML button display can be considered. As shown in this example, displaying two hierarchical button classes of “Affiliation> Employee” together is convenient as a front end for applications that handle hierarchical data.

It is a block diagram of the computer system for implementing this invention. It is a software block diagram of the button system for XML data. It is a figure which shows the outline | summary of an XML parsing function. It is a figure which shows the tree structure of input XML "business results.xml". It is a figure which shows the legend of each data. It is a figure which shows the basic sequence of this invention. It is a figure which shows a part of tree representation of input XML. It is a figure which shows the node structure and node list structure of an XML data table. It is a figure which shows the document element of "business results.xml". It is a figure which shows the tree structure of the "employee" element which appears first. It is a figure which shows the element structure tree (schema) when the continuity determination of an element structure is performed with respect to all of "business results.xml". It is a figure which shows the element structure tree and element structure subtree when the structure identity between elements is determined with respect to the element structure tree shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the element structure tree and element structure subtree when the judgment of the structural identity between elements is further performed with respect to the element structure tree shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the element structure tree and element structure subtree when the judgment of the structural identity between elements is further performed with respect to the element structure tree shown in FIG. FIG. 12 is a diagram when converting to the element structure subtree reference up to the root node of the element structure tree shown in FIG. It is a figure which shows the vertical relationship of extraction object. It is a figure which shows an example of an XML button. It is a figure which shows the other example (hierarchical button) of an XML button.

Explanation of symbols

10 central processing unit 12 storage device 14 display device 16 input device 20 XML parsing function 22 structure management function 24 button generation source data generation function 26 button generation function 28 button function 30 application 32 input XML
34 XML data table 40 XML data structure definition table 42 Button generation source data table

Claims (3)

Based on the XML data stored in the storage device, a programmed central processing unit operation button generation method for XML data to execute to generate the operation button,
(1) From the relation between elements constituting XML data, the relation between elements and attributes, and the values possessed by the elements and attributes, the XML data is regarded as a tree structure and all elements and attributes constituting the XML data are An XML data table storing information on mutual relationships and positional relationships is automatically generated and stored in a storage device.
(2) automatically generating a schema definition expressed in a schema language by analyzing the structure of the XML data while referring to the XML data table;
(3) (i) a data unit designated through the schema definition so as to be a reference element for generating an XML button among elements constituting the XML data, and (ii) the data unit itself, the data An extraction object having a buttonization object designated via the schema definition as a value to be extracted from the XML data, among the values of the descendant and ancestor elements or the values of the attributes on the unit XML data structure; Form button information consisting of
(4) The schema definition and the button information are collectively stored in a storage device as an XML data structure definition table,
(5) All the elements corresponding to the data unit of the button information are extracted from the XML data, and the element value or the attribute value included in the extracted element itself, a descendant element or an ancestor element of the element is used. The button information extracted from the XML data corresponding to the data unit is extracted as a record having a buttonization field corresponding to the buttonization target, and the button information is designated as the buttonization target. A button generation source data table consisting of one or more records with the value of the element or attribute extracted as specified in the field as the field value of the buttoned field is automatically generated and stored in the storage device. And
(6) An individual button generated corresponding to a unique value appearing in each buttoned field of the button generation source data table, and each individual button generated corresponding to each buttoned field A button class that controls each buttoned field, and automatically generates an XML button that can access XML data by selecting the individual button, and displays the XML button on a display device.
An operation button generation method for XML data characterized by the above.   The button information is included in an element extracted from the XML data corresponding to the data unit. When there is an element to be excluded from the element, the element to be excluded corresponds to the data unit from the XML data. 2. The method for generating an operation button for XML data according to claim 1, further comprising: an excluded instance designated to be excluded from the extracted element.   3. The XML data according to claim 1, wherein the XML button displayed on the display device is used to extract data corresponding to the individual button selected by the user from the button generation source data table. Operation button generation method.

Images