Document requesting system and method of receiving related document in advance

• US 6,144,973 A
• Filed: 09/05/1997
• Issued: 11/07/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 09/06/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Inventors: Minami, Masana, Amano, Shin-ya, Fujii, Hiroko
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam, Hosain T.
• Assistant Examiner(s): ALAM, SHAHID AL
• Application Number:
  US08/923,915
• Time in Patent Office: 1,159 Days
• Field of Search: 707/101, 707/102, 707/104, 707/501, 707/200, 707/500, 707/540, 707/3-6, 707/100
• US Class Current: 715/222
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

The degree of association between each document specified by each of the URLs included in the document transferred from a document providing system to a document requesting system and the document specified by the preceding document request is determined on the basis of the depth of link between the document specified by the preceding document request and each document specified by each URL or the degree of similarity between the contents of those documents. Using the thus obtained degree of association, a document to be received in advance is specified in the document requesting system. Consequently, even when a document having a lot of URLs is requested first or when each of the documents requested as related documents further includes a URL specifying another document, the document requesting system can specify documents closely related to the first requested document.

Claims

1. A document requesting system for requesting a document providing system to transfer related documents, said document requesting system comprising:

an extracting unit configured to extract from a first document transferred by request an identifier specifying a second document linked with the first document;

a determining unit configured to determine a depth of link between the second document specified by said extracted identifier and a predetermined document as a reference, the second document being determined to be one of the related documents in a case where the depth of link is smaller than a specific value; and

a requesting unit configured to request said document providing system to transfer the second document in the case where the depth of link is smaller than the specific value,

wherein said determining unit includes a number-of-levels counter which counts a number of levels that indicates what level of hierarchy the second document falls from the predetermined document as the reference.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the second document is determined to be one of the related documents in a case where the number of levels indicated by said number-of-levels counter is smaller than a specific value.

3. A method of receiving related documents in advance for use in a document requesting system for requesting a document providing system to transfer the related documents, said method comprising:

extracting from a first document transferred by request an identifier specifying a second document linked with the first document;

determining a depth of link between the second document specified by said extracted identifier and a predetermined document as a reference, the second document being determined to be one of the related documents in a case where the depth of link is smaller than a specified value; and

requesting said document providing system to transfer the second document in the case where the depth of link is smaller than the specific value,

wherein said determining includes counting a number of levels that indicates what level of hierarchy the second document falls from the predetermined document as the reference.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the second document is determined to be one of the related documents in a case where the number of levels indicated by said number-of-levels counter is smaller than a specific value.