Web Server for Multi-Version Web Documents

• US 20100223260A1
• Filed: 03/15/2010
• Published: 09/02/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 05/06/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Wu, Zhe
• Granted Patent: US 9,672,296 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/723
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9574 of access to content, e.g. by caching
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99955 Archiving or backup

Abstract

A repository server that provides stored copies of Web-accessible documents A client of the repository server may register a document in the repository server. The repository server makes a copy of the registered document and returns a repository URL for the copy to the client. The repository URL may be used to fetch the copy from the repository URL. Registration further relates the stored copy to its document URL, to an identifier for the stored copy, to a fingerprint that is a condensed representation of the stored copy'"'"'s content and can be used to determine degrees of similarity other than match-no match, and to a set of stored copies having similar content. The fingerprints are used to compute similarity. The similarity computation further employs comparisons of links in the documents and of document URLS to determine whether it is necessary to use the fingerprints to compute similarity.

Claims

1. A method of comparing digital documents,

the method comprising the steps of:

making fingerprints of the documents to be compared; and

comparing the fingerprints to determine a similarity value indicating a degree of similarity of the documents being compared, the similarity value being capable of expressing degrees of similarity in addition to identical or not identical.

2. The method set forth in claim 1 wherein

the digital documents include links to other digital documents and

the method further comprises the step of:

determining from a comparison of the links in the documents to be compared whether the documents are similar enough to justify performance of the step of comparing fingerprints.

3. The method set forth in claim 2 wherein:

in the step of determining from a comparison of the links, the numbers of links in the documents are compared.

4. The method set forth in claim 2 wherein:

in the step of determining from a comparison of the links, the destinations of the links in the documents are compared.

5. The method set forth in claim 1 wherein:

the digital documents are identified by identifiers; and

the method includes the step of relating the fingerprint for a digital document to the digital document'"'"'s identifier,

whereby digital documents whose identifiers are known and that have fingerprints may be compared without reference to the documents or copies thereof.

6. The method set forth in claim 5 wherein:

the identifiers are document locators used to locate the documents in a network.

7. The method set forth in claim 1 further comprising the step of:

relating a given one of the digital documents to similarity values for a set of other ones of the digital documents.

8. The method set forth in claim 7 wherein:

the digital documents are identified by identifiers; and

in the step of relating, the identifier for the given one of the digital documents is related to identifiers and similarity values for the set of other ones of the digital documents.

9. The method set forth in claim 8 wherein:

the identifiers are document locators used to locate the documents in a network.

10. A data storage device characterized in that:

the data storage device contains code which when executed in a processor implements the method set forth in claim 1.

11. A method of making a fingerprint for a digital document that contains both structural information and content information,

the method comprising the steps of:

encoding the structural information using a first encoding that preserves semantic information about the structural information; and

encoding the content information using a second encoding.

12. The method set forth in claim 11 wherein:

in the step of encoding the structural information, the structural information is encoded in an order in which the structural information occurs in the digital document; and

content information is encoded as it is encountered while encoding the structural information.

13. The method set forth in claim 12 wherein:

the structural information is HTML tags.

14. A data storage device characterized in that:

the data storage device contains code which when executed in a processor implements the method set forth in claim 11.

15. A method of comparing a first fingerprint for a first digital document with a second fingerprint for a second digital document, the fingerprints containing both structural and content information from the digital documents and being made by encoding the structural information using a first encoding that preserves semantic information about the structural information and encoding the content information using a second encoding and

the method comprising the steps of:

1. finding an encoding of structural information in the first fingerprint;

2. finding a substring in the second fingerprint that matches a substring in the first fingerprint that begins at the found encoding;

3. adding the length of the found substring to a running length total;

4. finding another encoding of structural information in the first fingerprint that is not contained in any found substring and repeating steps 1-3 with the other encoding;

5. repeating steps 1-4 until no further encodings of structural information can be found in step 4; and

6. using the length of one of the fingerprints and the running length total to compute a similarity value.

16. A data storage device characterized in that:

the data storage device contains code which when executed in a processor implements the method set forth in claim 15.

17. A fingerprint for a digital document, the digital document including both structural information and content information and the fingerprint comprising:

a structural encoding portion in which a first encoding preserves semantic information about components of the digital document'"'"'s structural information; and

a content encoding portion in which a second encoding preserves content information about components of the digital document'"'"'s content,

whereby a degree of similarity other than identity or lack thereof between two digital documents is determinable by comparing the fingerprints belonging to the digital documents.

18. The fingerprint set forth in claim 17 wherein:

components of the structural encoding portion and components of the content encoding portion occur in the fingerprint in an order in which the components encoded in the encoding portions occur in the digital document.

19. The fingerprint set forth in claim 18 wherein:

in the digital document, the components are nested.

20. The fingerprint set forth in claim 18 wherein:

the components of the structural information are HTML tags 21. A data storage device characterized in that;

the data storage device contains the fingerprint set forth in claim 17.

21. A data storage device characterized in that:

the data storage device contains the fingerprint set forth in claim 17.