SYNTHESZING INFORMATION-BEARING CONTENT FROM MULTIPLE CHANNELS

• US 20090019045A1
• Filed: 08/14/2008
• Published: 01/15/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/11/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: AMIR, ARNON, Kraft, Reiner, Denesuk, Matthew, Blanchard, Brian K., Ashour, Gal
• Granted Patent: US 7,945,564 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/913 Multimedia
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access

Abstract

A computing system and method receive a query; separate a plurality of information sources into individual elements of content (EOC); tag each EOC with metadata that indicate source, date, and other relevant information; pattern match each EOC; calculate the respective distance function from every EOC to every other EOC; and output EOC to a set of virtual buffers (404) containing appropriately related EOC less than a given distance value. The method further creates virtual summary buffers (406); then concatenates the EOC in each virtual buffer (404); applies a comparative analysis filter (318) to remove redundant sub-elements; and presents the results as summary digests (408).

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a data storage adapted to store information and executable programs;

at least processor, communicatively coupled to the data storage, the at least one processor adapted to execute the executable programs;

a digest synthesizing application, communicatively coupled to the data storage and the at least one processor, wherein the digest synthesizing application, in response to receiving a query, is adapted to separate a plurality of information sources into individual elements of content (EOC), tag each EOC with metadata, pattern matches each EOC, and calculate a respective distance function from every EOC to every other EOC in order to calculate a respective distance function for each combination of two EOC;

a result set manager, communicatively coupled to the data storage, the at least one processor and the digest synthesizing application, adapted to;

pre-define each buffer within a plurality of virtual buffers to contain EOC that all have respective distance functions between each other of less than a given distance value, wherein at least one buffer within the plurality of buffers is pre-defined based upon the query;

provide each of the EOC to a respective associated virtual buffer within the plurality of virtual buffers based upon the respective distance functions between the each of the EOC and EOC previously provided to that respective associated virtual buffer;

concatenate the EOC in each virtual buffer to create a respective concatenated EOC;

extract context-preserving EOC from each respective concatenated EOC, the context-preserving EOC being determined based upon a respective degree of corroboration of the context preserving EOC;

synthesize the content-preserving EOC extracted from each respective concatenated EOC into summary digests; and

present the summary digests, and

wherein the digest synthesizing application further comprises;

a pattern matching filter adapted to pattern match each EOC; and

a comparative analysis filter, communicatively coupled to the pattern-matching filter, adapted to remove redundant sub-elements from each respective concatenated EOC; and

a result set, communicatively coupled to the data storage, the at least one processor, and the result set manager, comprising the plurality of virtual buffers.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the digest synthesizing application comprises:

a query handler, adapted to receive the query;

an input filter, communicatively coupled to the query handler, adapted to separate the plurality of information sources into individual elements of content (EOC);

a distance calculator, communicatively coupled to the input filter, adapted to calculate the respective distance function from every EOC to every other EOC; and

a pattern-matching filter, communicatively coupled to the distance calculator, adapted to pattern match each EOC.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a user interface; and

a user interface/event manager, communicatively coupled to the user interface and the digest synthesizing application, adapted to receive the user query from the user interface and present the result set to the user interface.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the result set comprises:

a set of tagged EOC;

a set of virtual buffers, communicatively coupled to the set of tagged EOC; and

a set of summary digests, communicatively coupled to the set of virtual buffers.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the result set further comprises a set of virtual summary buffers, and wherein the result set manager is further adapted to:

summarize text based EOC contained within each virtual buffer within the set of virtual buffers to create a summarization of each respective virtual buffer; and

create a corresponding virtual summary buffer within the set of virtual summary buffers for each of a plurality of virtual buffers within the set of virtual buffers, each corresponding virtual summary buffer containing a summarization of a respective virtual buffer within the set of virtual buffers.

6. A computer readable storage medium tangibly encoded with computer instructions for driving a digest synthesizing application, the computer instructions comprising instructions for:

receiving a query;

separating a plurality of information sources into individual elements of content (EOC);

pattern matching each EOC;

calculating a respective distance function from every EOC to every other EOC for each combination of two EOC;

pre-defining each buffer within a plurality of virtual buffers to contain EOC that all have respective distance functions between each other of less than a given distance value, wherein at least one buffer within the plurality of buffers is pre-defined based upon the query;

providing each of the EOC to a respective associated virtual buffer within the plurality of virtual buffers based upon the respective distance functions between the each of the EOC and EOC previously provided to that respective associated virtual buffer;

concatenating the EOC in each virtual buffer to create a respective concatenated EOC;

applying a comparative analysis filter to remove redundant sub-elements from each respective concatenated EOC;

extracting context-preserving EOC from each respective concatenated EOC, the context-preserving EOC being determined based upon a respective degree of corroboration of the context preserving EOC;

synthesizing the content-preserving EOC extracted from each respective concatenated EOC into summary digests; and

presenting the summary digests.

7. The computer readable storage medium of claim 6, the computer instructions further comprising instructions for:

summarizing text based EOC contained within each virtual buffer within the plurality of virtual buffers to create a respective summarization of each respective virtual buffer; and

creating a corresponding virtual summary buffer for each of a plurality of virtual buffers within the plurality of virtual buffers, each corresponding virtual summary buffer containing the respective summarization of a respective virtual buffer within the plurality of virtual buffers.