KR0139554B1 - How to create and edit an electronic document form in an electronic document exchange system - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for generating and editing an electronic document form in an electronic document exchange system. If only standard data exists, a document form can be generated and used immediately at any time without requiring a separate form creation program using a datatadriving method. In order to provide a method of creating and editing an electronic document form, the first step is to query a standard database (DB) if a new electronic document form is created and to read a stored electronic document form if an edit is made of an existing electronic document form. 40l to 403): a second step (404 to 406) of creating a message structure, selecting a segment to be edited after deleting an unapplied group or segment; And the third step (407 to 4l2) of defining the group and editing properties according to the segment type, and then generating the document form and sequentially storing the elements constituting the segment in the document form file. This has the effect of reducing the burden on the user and completing document forms quickly.

Description

How to create and edit an electronic document form in an electronic document exchange system

1 is a schematic structural block diagram of an EDI system,

2 is a flow chart of document transmission and reception in a general EDI system,

3 is a configuration diagram of a personal computer to which the present invention is applied;

4 is a flowchart for creating and editing an electronic document form according to the present invention;

5 is an exemplary diagram of a standard message diagram according to the present invention;

6 is a structural diagram of a message composed of a segment table according to the present invention;

7 is a structural diagram of information constituting a group segment according to the present invention;

8 is a structural diagram of data elements constituting a data segment according to the present invention;

9 is a structural diagram of a document style file according to the present invention.

Explanation of symbols on the main parts of the drawings

301: central processing unit 302: control unit

303: arithmetic unit 304: main memory

305: auxiliary memory device 306: input device

307: output device

The present invention relates to a method for generating and editing an electronic document format in an electronic document exchange system (hereinafter referred to as an EDI system).

Like social overhead capital such as roads, harbors and railways, ICTs have a tremendous impact on all industries and are an important measure of corporate and national competitiveness. Among them, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which provides a new way of doing business with paperless transactions, has emerged as an essential means for companies to compete globally. In the following, the definition of EDI, introduction effect, and EDI document standard, EDI communication standard, EDI software, and EDI hardware for configuring EDI will be described to help the present invention.

Conventional faxes and e-mails transmit data electronically by expressing the data in a form that can be read by an unformatted person. However, the fax and electronic mail are not standardized forms, and thus, the receiver must re-enter necessary data into a computer for processing.

However, in EDI systems, the data is generated in a standard form structured by a computer application, which is fundamentally different from the above fax and e-mail, so that it can be interpreted and processed by other computer processing programs, and the transaction documents between the company and the company can be processed. They are exchanged electronically over a network in a structured and standardized format for computer-based processing. For example, instead of sending and receiving paper documents such as orders, invoices, and quotations by mail or in person, the transaction document data is sent and received electronically. It is possible to be delivered automatically without.

The EDI system that connects each company's information system needs only software that can generate and interpret documents in accordance with EDI document standards and communication standards without being restricted by computer hardware, software, geolocation, time zones, and communication facilities. Anyone can send paperless electronic documents anywhere, anytime, to any customer.

In other words, the scope of EDI is very wide, enabling not only vertical information flow but also horizontal information flow between industries and industries, and also international information flow between countries. Therefore, the data is repeatedly input in the conventional document processing methods such as telephone, mail, and fax, so that the processing time is delayed, the accuracy of the data by re-input is reduced, much time and manpower are consumed, Inefficient and complex, but using EDI systems can reduce costs such as inventory costs, transportation costs, and data errors, improve work efficiency, improve customer service, improve relationships with customers, and improve international competitiveness.

In order to realize such an EDI system, standards for exchanged documents must be established. Since the format of documents used by each company is different, rules on the content and structure of electronic documents are required to receive them electronically. .

Syntax rules: Rules that govern the structure and organization of electronic documents

· Data item: the unit of data that makes up an electronic document

· Electronic document: define electronic documents by combining material items according to syntax rules

Document standards have evolved from corporate standards, industry standards, national standards and regional standards to international standards.

Industry standards: TDCC (Transportation, 1986), UCS (Food), WINS (Warehouse) ...

National Standards: ANSIX12 (North America, 198I), UNTDI (Europe)

International standard: UN / EDIFACT (UN, 1987)

In order to enable the international distribution of information, the United Nations (UN / ECE) has established the standard of exchange documents for each field such as trade, banking, aviation, transportation and administration as the international standard (UN / EDIFACT). , Message design guidelines, data item directories, data segment directories, and message directories. These international standards (UN / EDIFACT) are document standards on global EDI that have been approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as international standards.

In addition, there is a need for a standard for communication to support the exchange of electronic documents. In the past, various communication protocols existed, and although the EDI Third Party solved the communication problem in the middle, the International Telecom Advisory Committee, an international telecommunication standard organization (CCITT) has established X.435 and F.435 communication standards that combine EDI and X.400 MHS (MessageHandling syste) to solve communication problems for transmitting electronic documents. X.435 and F.435 define protocols and services for EDI document transmission, respectively.

With the advent of X.435 based on the OSI (Open System Interconnection) seven-layer model, it is possible to reliably transmit EDI documents with multimedia data in geopolitically distributed EDI systems regardless of customer location, computer type, or communication network. It became possible.

The software for EDI requires a subscriber system installed at the subscriber (EDI subscriber) side and a message store and relay system installed at the transmission host having a function of transmitting and temporarily storing a message transmitted between subscribers. EDI is available on any hardware platform such as personal computers (PCs), workstations, minicomputers, mainframes, as well as communication modems. EDI system based on personal computers with the emergence of low-cost, high-performance personal computers and many EDI software. Deployment is possible at low cost, contributing to the spread of EDI.

An example of an EDI system based on the X.435 and F.435 standards and international document standards, based on the X.400 Recommendations of the International Telegraph and Telephone Advisory Committee (CCITT), is as follows:

Once an EDI system can have various hardware (H / W) and software (S / W) configurations, depending on the application and the user's environment, the software (S / W) is basically a subscriber system and a subscriber processor. It consists of a relay system, a message store, and various subsystems can be installed in various combinations according to the user's hardware (H / W) and software (S / W) environment. W) Platforms may vary.

FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram of an EDI system. Each subsystem constituting the system serves as follows.

First, the subscriber system connects to a relay host equipped with a subscriber processor, a message store (MS), and a plurality of relay systems (MTAs) through a public telephone network (PSTN), and sends a message to another subscriber. You can use services such as searching and viewing messages from other subscribers.

That is, it provides various functions for the user to create and transmit or receive an EDI message, a document form generation system, a document editing system, a document conversion system, a communication processing system in charge of EDI message transmission / reception between a relay host and a subscriber system, The message store inquiry system according to the message store access protocol (P7), and the document management system which objectizes and manages transmission / reception documents and management information.

The subscriber processor performs a function of encoding or decoding a message transmitted in the subscriber system and the message storage period. That is, the message created and transmitted by the subscriber system is encoded according to the encoding rule (ASN.1) and transmitted to the message store, or the message transmitted from the message store is decrypted and transmitted to the subscriber system.

The message store is a system that acts as a relay between the subscriber processor and the relay system, and performs a function of receiving and storing a message transmitted to the subscriber from the relay system. In addition, for messages stored in the message store, the user can use the subscriber system to search the number of messages satisfying a specific condition, take a specific message entirely, or search the list of stored messages. Provides the ability to The P7 protocol (message store retrieval protocol) applies when messages are delivered to subscriber handlers and message storage periods, and the P3 protocol (submission and delivery protocol) applies when delivered between message store and relay systems.

The relay system transmits a message submitted from the message store through the subscriber system to another relay system or delivers the message to the message store connected to the relay system, i.e., the P3 protocol (submission and delivery protocol) The message is stored in the message store or the message is submitted from the message store, and the message is transferred to another relay system using the Pl protocol (message transfer protocol). In addition, multiple relay systems can be connected to relay messages, a check-and-save method that delivers the message, and a confirmation service that delivers the message delivery requestor's success or failure, and the priority of each message delivery. It provides various services such as support, delivery selection function such as delayed delivery, contents conversion to various media, error diagnosis function according to message submission and delivery.

2 is a flowchart of document transmission / reception in a general EDI system. The process of generating and transmitting a document is as follows.

The sender starts and logs in to the subscriber system of the personal computer (20l), creates and edits the document form by entering the contents of the document in the form of the document (202), converts the document (203) and selects the send menu (204). After the mesh is created (205), the relay host is connected (206) and the document is transmitted (207).

Then, the relay host receiving the document notifies the receiving party (PC) that the connection has already been started and logged in to establish a connection (208). The receiving side calls the message (209), classifies and stores the account (2l0), converts the document (2ll), and confirms the received document (2l2).

Based on the basic understanding of the EDI system as described above, the prior art and the present invention will be described.

In the conventional EDI system, a separate program has been created for each document and provided to users in order to edit the exchanged document.

Therefore, when a new document standard is enacted or an EDI system is applied to a new industry, a document editing program must be written every time, and when a part of the standard for a document already distributed and used is changed, the program for generating the document is modified. The difficulty of distributing them back to users continues.

Therefore, document form generation frameworks have been provided to eliminate this inconvenience, but they have been used to input the structure of standard data using a general editor, and input the attributes and types of the data directly.

However, the generation and method of the conventional electronic document form is difficult to maintain the exact structure of the standard data having the multilevel level, and thus it takes a lot of time by causing several syntax errors and attribute errors to generate one form. There was a problem.

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides an electronic document form that can be used immediately by creating a document form at any time without the need for a separate form creation program using the data driven method, provided that only standard data exists in the electronic document exchange system. The purpose is to provide a way of creating and editing.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention is a method applied to a general-purpose general purpose computer, in which if a new electronic document form is generated, a standard database (DB) is queried, and if an edit of an existing electronic document form is stored, First step to read document form; A second step of generating a message structure after performing the first step, selecting a segment to be edited after deleting an unapplied group or segment; And after performing the second step, after defining the group property and the editing property according to the segment type, generating a document form and sequentially storing the elements constituting the segment in the document form file.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described an embodiment according to the present invention;

3 is a configuration diagram of a personal computer to which the present invention is applied, where 30l is a central processing unit, 302 is a control unit, 303 is an arithmetic unit, 304 is a main memory device, 305 is an auxiliary memory device, 306 is an input device, and 307 is Represent each output device.

Looking at the operation, since the arithmetic unit 303 and the control unit 302 becomes the center of computer processing, these are collectively referred to as a central processing unit 301, and an accompanying input unit 306, auxiliary storage unit 305, and The output device 307 or the like is called a peripheral device. The main memory device is a high speed memory device that enables data or information movement between the central processing unit 301 and a peripheral device.

The central processing unit 30l is a device for performing the overall control of the present invention. The central processing unit 30l takes out and deciphers the command of a program stored in a storage device (main memory or auxiliary storage device) line by line, and performs control for execution.

The memory device (main memory device or auxiliary memory device) is a device that stores the program contents of the present invention and the input / output data of the present invention, and stores the output result after the processing is completed.

The input device 306 is a device that receives a user input for driving the present invention or a user input during execution.

The output device 307 is a device that serves as a medium for outputting the results output by the present invention to the user.

4 is a flowchart for creating and editing an electronic document form according to the present invention.

The present invention harmonizes data from a database in which a standard document is defined, expresses a document in memory as a segment structure, defines the number of repetitions of a group, divides, deletes, defines the number of repetitions of a segment, and deletes the data. Etc. are processed using the segment structure, and when a specific segment is selected, the data elements constituting it are retrieved from the DB again to form the entire document structure, and the processing is performed using the entire document structure formed on the screen. Selecting an item (group, data element, graphical information) provides a corresponding user interface and creates an electronic document form by filling in the desired value.

Looking specifically at the operation, it is determined whether to generate a new electronic document form or to edit an electronic document form file that is already created and stored (401). The message type is displayed on the screen to be selected, and the message is read from the standard DB using the selected message identifier (402). If the electronic document form is to be edited, the electronic document form already generated and stored is read (403). .

The structure of the international standard document is a combination of segments. Depending on the characteristics of the document, several segments may be grouped together to form a group, and another group may be defined within the group. In addition, repetition may be applied to a group or a segment. One message diagram according to international standard rules is illustrated in FIG. 5.

After reading a message from a standard database (402) or reading an electronic document form (403), using the segment table defined in the present invention, a message structure that is inquired or read is made into a message structure and maintained in memory and displayed on the screen (404). ).

It reads messages in segment units from the international standard message DB and forms the structure of messages in memory only in segments. When querying the message structure, only the segments for the corresponding message are returned in order. Each segment contains the group information to which it belongs. Using this, the group information is composed in memory and each segment is group information. Associate with At this time, in the present invention, each group is regarded as one segment and processed in the memory. The message structure formed in the memory is processed into a form that can be recognized by the user and processed on the screen.

The result of processing the diagram of Fig. 5 in the segment table structure is shown in Fig. 6.

After keeping the message structure in memory and displaying it on the screen (404), delete any optional groups or segments that exist in the standard message but are not used by your enterprise, and when the deletion is complete, update the memory and screen (405). Select the segment to be edited (406). In this case, the delete method is to place the cursor on the line to be deleted and press the delete button. In the case of a group, all the groups and segments belonging to the group are deleted. For example, if group 2 is deleted from the message of FIG. 6, all five segments such as 'group 2', 'I I I', 'group 3', 'JJJ' and 'KKK' are deleted.

Whether the selected segment is a group segment representing a group or a data segment representing pure data is determined using the attributes of the selected segment (407). If the group segment is defined, the characteristics of the group are defined (408). That is, the coordinates, the number of repetitions, and the graphics (text, line, pattern, and bitmap) information forming the group are defined. At this time, the defined group characteristic information is stored in the pointer of the corresponding segment. The message structure shown in Fig. 6 is represented by the characteristic information constituting the group segment as shown in Fig. 7.

If the selected segment is a data segment, the data element constituting the data segment is retrieved from the DB, connected to the pointer of the segment, and displayed on the screen (409). If the optional segment is not to be deleted, the data element is deleted and maintained in memory and displayed on the screen (410), and then the coordinates and editing characteristics of the data element to be edited are defined in the text editor (411). At this time, the structure of the data elements constituting the data segment is as shown in FIG.

After defining the group property and the editing property (408, 41l), create a document form to be used in the text editor, and when the preliminary work for saving is completed, the elements constituting the segment are stored in the form file in order from the first segment. (4I2). In this case, a group storage routine is used when the segment represents a group, and a data element storage routine is used when a segment is represented.

The structure of the document style file is as shown in FIG. 9, before calculating the information of each group (group size, data element size, graphic element size, etc.) to be used in the text editor before storing the file.

In FIG. 9, LH denotes group information data generated for classifying groups in a text editor, ST denotes graphic information, and DE denotes data element information.

According to the present invention, when selecting the elements (groups, segments, data elements, graphic information, etc.) displayed on the screen, different user interfaces according to the characteristics of this element are automatically provided and a database for standard documents is provided. Because of this, any document maintains an accurate structure, and data attributes are automatically assigned, thereby reducing the burden on the user and creating a document form quickly.

Claims (9)

In a general general purpose computer, the first step (401 to 403) for querying a standard database (DB) when generating a new electronic document form and reading a stored electronic document form when editing an existing letter document form. ); A second step (404 to 406) of creating a message structure after performing the first step (40l to 403), and selecting a segment to be edited after deleting the non-applying group or segment; And after performing the second steps 404 to 406, after defining the properties and the editing properties according to the segment type, the third step (407 to 407) to sequentially generate the document form and store the thermal elements constituting the segments in the document form file. 412) A method for creating and editing an electronic document form in an electronic document exchange system. 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the first steps (401 to 403) comprise: a fourth step (40l) for determining whether to create a new electronic document form or to edit an already created and stored electronic document form file; After performing the fourth step 40l, in order to create a new electronic document form, the user selects and displays a type of standard message registered in the standard DB on the screen, and reads a message from the standard DB using the selected message identifier. Step 402; And a sixth step 403 of reading out an electronic document form that has already been generated and stored if the electronic document form is to be collected after the fourth step 401 is performed. How to create and edit a form. The method of claim 1, wherein the second step (404 to 406), a message structure is used to retrieve a message that has been queried or read using a segment table after a process of querying a standard database or a process of reading an existing electronic document form. A fourth step 404 for creating and maintaining in memory and displaying on the screen; A fifth step (405) of deleting a selective group or segment existing in the standard message but not used by the enterprise after the fourth step (404), and updating the memory and the screen when the deletion is completed; And a sixth step (406) of selecting a segment to be edited after performing the fifth step (405). The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the third step (407 to 4112) determines whether the selected segment is a group segment representing a group or a data segment representing pure data using an attribute of the selected segment. ; A fifth step (408, 412) of generating the document form after defining the characteristics of the group after performing the fourth step (407), and storing the elements constituting the segment in the document form file in order; After performing the fourth step 407, if the data segment is a data segment, the data element constituting the data segment is retrieved from the DB, connected to the pointer of the corresponding segment, and displayed on the screen. For optional segments to be defined and not used, delete the data element to keep in memory and display on the screen, define the coordinates and editing characteristics of the data element to be edited in the text editor, then create the document form file and create the segment. And a sixth step (409 to 411) for sequentially storing the constituent elements in the document form. The method of claim 1, wherein the deleting of the non-applying group or segment of the second step 404 site 406 is by placing a cursor on the line to be deleted and pressing the delete button. A method of creating and editing an electronic document form in an electronic document exchange system, wherein all groups and segments are deleted. The electronic document exchange system of claim 1, wherein the group characteristics of the third step (407 to 4112) include coordinates, repeat times, and graphic information forming a group of the group to be located when editing the document. How to create and edit electronic document forms. The process of claim 1, wherein the storing in the document style file of the third step (497 to 412) is performed after each group information is calculated, to the group storing routine when the segment is a group, and to the data when displaying the data segment. A method for creating and editing an electronic document form in an electronic document exchange system, characterized by storing in an element storage routine. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the group information includes a size of a group, a size of a data element and a size of a graphic element. The structure of the document style file of the third step (407 to 4112) comprises group information data, graphic information and data element information generated for classifying groups in the text editor. How to create and edit electronic document forms in an electronic document exchange system.