Method of searching documents and a service for searching documents

• US 20020078030A1
• Filed: 02/15/2002
• Published: 06/20/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 11/19/1998
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Iwayama, Makoto, Niwa, Yoshiki, Nishioka, Shingo, Takano, Akihiko
• Granted Patent: US 7,693,910 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/30 of unstructured textual data document management systems G06F16/93
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/345 Summarisation for human users
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface

Abstract

This invention aims to provide an efficient means of performing a document search wherein relevance between plural document databases is examined. A summary making module and a search module are provided to document databases, and these are connected to a network as a server. A client obtains a relevant set of documents in a specified document database via this summary from a set of documents in the specified document database. The summary obtained is sent to another server, and a search is performed according to the summary in a document database in the server to which the summary is transferred.

Claims

1. A document search method having a function to change over between plural document databases, and a function to search a set of documents having a high relevance to a search input from a selected document database in the order of higher relevance, this input being a set of keywords, fragments of a document or any desired set of documents, wherein the search results from said document database can be used as input for searching another database.

2. A document search method as defined in claim 1, wherein an interface is provided in which a set of documents from the search result of one document database can be selected or deselected, and a set of documents selected from the search result can be used as input to perform a search on another database.

3. A document search method as defined in claim 1, wherein a summary containing only topic words in the search input is used to perform a search.

4. A document search method as defined in claim 1, wherein servers comprising document databases and programs to manipulate said databases are dispersed over a network, a client transmits a set of documents in a search input to a server where a selected document database is stored, receives a summary comprising only topic words related to the set of documents which is sent, sends a search input corresponding to said summary reflecting a user'"'"'s evaluation of the summary to a server where another document database is stored, and receives a search result.

5. A document search method as defined in claim 4, wherein said server produces a summary from topic words relevant to a set of documents sent by the client and transmits it to the client, and searches and transmits a set of documents having a high relevance to any summary sent by the client, to the client.

6. A document search method as defined in claim 4, wherein said client has an interface for specifying a set of documents for search input and document databases to be searched, the set of documents in the search input is sent to a server specified by the user, a summary of the set of documents is received from this server, the summary received is sent to a server comprising another document database, and search results are received from the latter server and displayed.

8. A document search method as defined in claim 2, wherein a summary containing only topic words in the search input is used to perform a search.

9. A document search method as defined in claim 2, wherein servers comprising document databases and programs to manipulate said databases are dispersed over a network, a client transmits a set of documents in a search input to a server where a selected document database is stored, receives a summary comprising only topic words related to the set of documents which is sent, sends a search input corresponding to said summary reflecting a user'"'"'s evaluation of the summary to a server where another document database is stored, and receives a search result.

7. A service for searching documents wherein servers comprising document databases and programs to manipulate said databases are dispersed over a network and a client connected to said servers performs a document search, said service providing a function for the client to transmit a set of documents in a search input to one of said servers where a selected document database is stored, receive a summary comprising only topic words related to the set of documents which is sent, send a search input corresponding to said summary reflecting a user'"'"'s evaluation of the summary to a server where another document database is stored, and receive a search result, wherein said server produces a summary of topic words relevant to the set of documents sent by the client and transmits it to the client, and searches and transmits a set of documents having a high relevance to any desired summary sent by the client, to the client.