Method of searching documents and a service for searching documents

• US 6,584,460 B1
• Filed: 11/18/1999
• Issued: 06/24/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 11/19/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Iwayama, Makoto, Niwa, Yoshiki, Nishioka, Shingo, Takano, Akihiko
• Primary Examiner(s): Rones, Charles
• Application Number:
  US09/442,147
• Time in Patent Office: 1,314 Days
• Field of Search: 707/3, 707/4, 707/6, 707/10, 707/102
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 one of said plural document databases 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 selected document database are used as an input for searching another of said plural document databases.

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 said selected document database are selected or deselected, and a set of documents selected from the search result are used as an input to perform a search on said 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 said plural document databases and programs to manipulate said plural document databases are dispersed over a network, a client transmits a set of documents in a search input to a server where said 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 said another document database is stored, and receives a search result from a search of said another document database.

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 the server comprising said another document database, and search results are received from the latter server and displayed.

7. 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.

8. A document search method as defined in claim 2, wherein servers comprising said plural document databases and programs to manipulate said plural document databases are dispersed over a network, a client transmits a set of documents in a search input to a server where said 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 said another document database is stored, and receives a search result.