Method and system for judging reliability of resources, and program for the same

A method and system of examining resource reliability in which a data acquisition section collects a utilization performance record of a resource previously recorded in a utilization performance record storage and data on the resource stored in a Web server and stores them, and a reliability judge section judges the reliability of the resource based on the data stored in the data acquisition section. The resource with high reliability is offered based on the results of the judgment in response to a request.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

When a user who considers using Web services wants to acquire the reliability of a resource that is to be used on the Web services, it is often difficult for the user to select the resource that the user desires because of the user's limited knowledge of the resource or to select from a massive amount of information on resources, and it takes enormous amount of time to do so. Thus, in order to solve such problem, the present invention proposes a method and system for judging reliability of a resource and program for the same so that the reliability of resource can be judged and that the resource can be assigned according to the results of the judgment if necessary.

When a truster wishes to commit or entrust a certain development task that needs technical expertise to a certain trustee, the truster owns information including technical level and field of experience of the trustee and entrustable period of time for use in determining whether the trustee is ready for being entrusted, such information constituting invisible asset (intangible property) the trustee owns. There is known a method for making intensive and effective retrieval/comparison/inspection of such information corresponding to those invisible assets that the truster owns (for example, see JP-A-2000-197263). However, no method for judging reliability of resources is disclosed.

Conventionally, an information system owned by a company is intended to be used only within the company itself and hence it suffices that the company obtains necessary resources by itself and does necessary maintenance operations.

However, in the recent advent of Web services wherein information systems of a plurality of different enterprises are integrated through a network so that companies can transmit and receive information between the companies without human assistance or intervention, thereby encouraging enterprise alliance and improving information propagation efficiency so that the services to the users can be expanded, such companies that own no resources have began to utilize the Web services and hence there have arisen the needs for acquiring the performance and reliability of the resources in addition to the information on the companies that developed the resources to be used on the Web services.

The user who considers using Web services obtains the performance and reliability of resources necessary for building up Web services from the information publicized on homepages, and judges the reliability. However, the user who has little or even some background knowledge of resources cannot judge the overall reliability of resources on the basis of the kinds and values of performance of vast amounts of resources.

In addition, since the research agencies that collect information for judging the reliability of resources from the users who have experience of having used those resources and provide the results of reliability judgment, are still limited in number, there is a problem that both the reliability of the research agencies themselves and the reliability of the judged results are not high.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In order to solve the above problems, the invention proposes a method and system for judging resource reliability wherein in order to judge the reliability of a resource necessary for utilizing a Web service, the system has:

a utilization performance record storage for storing information including performances and failure rates of resources that have been used and total evaluation results of companies including their response to user (i.e., the manner in which the companies treat the users);

a Web server that holds the performance of the resource and company information disclosed by the resource-holding companies;

a data acquisition section for acquiring from the utilization performance storage and Web server information necessary for judging the resource reliability; and

a reliability judge unit for judging the reliability of the resource based on the resource condition received by the data acquisition section and a receiving section, wherein the results of resource reliability judgment are supplied from the receiving section to a user terminal and when an order of the resource is accepted, the receiving section sends an inquiry to the Web server and assigns the resource to the user.

A program that realizes the above functions or a recording medium having this program stored therein can also achieve the above object.

Other features of the invention will be better understood from the accompanying drawings and the description of this specification.

DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

Embodiments of the invention will be described with reference to the drawings. The terms used in the description of the invention will be defined first.

The Web service is the technique that is based on the techniques of XML (Extensible Markup Language) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), modularizes the functions of applications, and offers them as services on Web. For example, multiple different firms are consolidated through network, and the user can simply request the unified enterprise to offer services that support the needs of the user without inquiring or asking over a plurality of firms.

The conventional mode of the enterprise system is that, for booking a trip, the user has so far made a reservation to an air carrier when buying airline tickets, ordered in advance to a hotel when reserving a room, made reservations of other parts of the journey directly to specialized agencies, and bought them when word came that you got reservations. In contrast, in this Web service, a tourist agency integrates a plurality of enterprise systems of plane tickets, hotels and others so that the computers of the companies can transmit information of procedure up to the issue from application directly to each other through network without human assistance or hands.

The term resource is the resource necessary for the user to utilize the Web service, for example, computers such as personal computers and workstations, network equipment such as routers and hubs for connecting those computers to the network, applications for achieving documentation and numeric data processing, and storages such as hard disks for storing various types of data.

FIG. 1schematically shows an example of the whole construction of a resource reliability judging system. This system includes a user terminal11of computer on which the user who has never used the Web system or utilizes the resource reliability judging system for the first time can receive necessary resource information using the computer, and a user information storage center10having a utilization performance record storage14provided for the user having experience of having used the Web system to store the utilization performance record, i.e., the past record of the Web system utilization and evaluation results thereof and a Web service15by which the computers can directly make communication between companies without human intervention or human hands. The system further includes an IDC (Internet Data Center)13having a Web server20and a resource19provided for the firms having and holding the above-mentioned resource to store the performance and busy condition (utilization status) of resources necessary for using the Web service, and a reliability investigation (examination) unit12having a receiving section18that accepts a request for judging resource reliability from the user terminal11or from the user information storage center10and inquires of the Web server20whether or not the resource can be offered, a data acquisition section16for acquiring from the utilization performance record storage14and Web server20the information meeting the resource condition set in the user terminal11and a reliability judge section17that judges the reliability of the resource by use of the information acquired from the user condition. These portions are interconnected together through a network1in the system.

Here, it is assumed that each of the user terminal11, user information storage center10and IDC13may be provided singular or plural in number.

FIG. 2is a functional block diagram showing an example of the function of the Web server20held in the IDC13. The Web server20includes a performance storage section21for storing data of the performance of the resource held in the IDC13, an enterprise scale storage section22for storing the number of payrolls (the number of employees) and capital fund of the enterprise that provides the resource and the URL of a homepage from which the user can get such information, and a supply section23for providing the resource in response to a resource supply request from the user.

FIG. 3is a diagram showing an example of the construction of the utilization performance record storage14for storing the utilization performance record and evaluation of the resource used when the user information storage center10introduced the Web service. This utilization performance record storage14includes the performance evaluation storage section31, the customer enterprise storage section32and the total evaluation storage section33. The performance evaluation storage section31stores data on the failure rate and response time or the time taken for responding to an enquiry at the time of failure with respect to the resource of the Web service provider with which a business transaction has been made, and a performance evaluation value that the user himself determined from the performance records of the business transaction. The customer enterprise storage section32stores data on the name and department of the enterprise from which a resource has been offered or with which a business deal (transaction) has been made and years (time length) of the business connection, and an evaluation value for the business deal with the enterprise. The total evaluation storage section33stores data on the length of years and the number of times (frequency of utilization) of business transaction per product and per non-product project such as solution, alliance or the like of a customer enterprise, data on the amount of contract money and data on manner or attitude of the customer enterprise (namely, how the enterprise treats the user), and the experience in digitized representation of the total evaluation thereof.

FIG. 4is a diagram showing an example of the data structure of the performance evaluation table40that list the data structure of the performance evaluation storage section31.

The table40includes, for example, resource type42showing the kind of resources such as computer and storage, type or model name43identifiable as a particular resource, number44of introduced resources, failure rate45indicating the rate of failure from the start of introduction and up to present, response speed46indicating the time taken for a support center or the like to provide a solution to a failure measured from the time of occurrence of the failure, performance evaluation value47showing the value (numeral)-converted resource performance evaluation result per user information storage center10that is estimated from those utilization performance records, and updated date41on which an item of the performance evaluation table40has been updated.

FIG. 5is a diagram showing an example of the structure of data on the customer enterprise table50that lists the data structure of the customer enterprise storage section32in which the user who has used a resource stores information on not only the enterprise that has offered the resource but also the enterprise that has made a business transaction and is registered in the user information storage center.

The table50includes, for example, enterprise code51and department code52corresponding to company name and department name53, department code52, department name53, e-mail address54for responding to inquiry from the user, years (length of time) of trade (business connection)55, and customer (business deal) evaluation value56of trade period and attitude or behavior so far taken by the enterprise per user information storage center10.

FIG. 6is a diagram showing an example of the structure of data of the total evaluation table60that lists the data structure of the total evaluation storage section33. The total evaluation is determined based on resource performance evaluation and enterprise evaluation per resource as well as utilization frequency (namely, how often relatively small products have been purchased from the resource manufacturing enterprise) and number of times of contracts (namely, how often relatively large products have been orders-placed/received) and other various factors, such as the length of business connection and chemistry with the resource manufacturing enterprise, all considered as a whole.

This table includes, for example, resource holding enterprise code62corresponding to a performance record number61stored in the performance evaluation table40, years of utilization63of the resource, number of times of contract64, utilization frequency65, amount of orders placed/received66, and total evaluation value67derived by evaluating such information per user information center10.

FIG. 7is a diagram showing an example of the structure of data of the performance table70that lists the data structure of the performance storage section21for storing the performance of the resource that each IDC13has and holds.

For example, the table includes, for enterprise code71of the company that manufactures the resource of interest, type72and model73of the resource, a price74, performance75, and expandability76which are performance information that becomes necessary for selecting the resource.

FIG. 8is a diagram showing an example of the structure of data of the enterprise table80that lists the data structure of the enterprise scale storage section22for storing information on the enterprise that holds the resource of interest.

For example, the table80includes, for each enterprise code81and enterprise name82, a number of corresponding payrolls83and capital fund84, years of business85from its foundation and URL86of home page from which such information can be obtained.

FIG. 9is a diagram showing an example of the structure of data of the receiving table90that lists the data structure of the data used by the receiving desk18that accepts a request of resource reliability judgment sent from the user terminal11.

The receiving table90includes, for example, enquiry number91that is issued per accepted request, user's registered number92given only when the user is registered, accepted date93, resource type94, condition-195, condition-296and condition-397that are used to narrow the range of focus when examining the reliability, resource reliability judgment result99of the resource whose condition meets with a resource type94, and ordered/not-ordered column98indicating that the user ordered the resource of interest or not.

FIG. 10is a flowchart showing the flow of processing from when a resource reliability examination request from the user terminal11is accepted by the receiving section18to when information necessary for reliability judgment is acquired and data is rearranged.

In step101, when the request is sent from the user terminal11, the resource type, condition, user number and the corresponding inquiry number are provided and stored together with received date and time in the receiving table90.

In step102, data relating to the resource type stored in step101is collected from the performance evaluation storage section31and performance storage section21and stored in the data acquisition section16.

In step103, decision is made of whether other resource conditions than the resource type are specified in step101and if not, then the process ends without rearrangement.

In step104, when other conditions have been specified, the data obtained in step102is rearranged and extracted based on the conditions in order of from the condition of the lowest priority level to the highest.

In step105, decision is made of whether the rearrangement has been completed based on all the conditions and if not completed yet, then the step104is executed based on the next higher priority condition. The process in step104is repeated until the process according to all conditions is completed.

FIG. 11is a flowchart showing the flow of processing for judging the reliability by using the rearranged data obtained inFIG. 10.

In step111, the head data of the acquisition list table130after rearranged in step105is read and the total evaluation value is set to zero point. In step112, decision is made of whether the same type name is included in the data so far read.

In step113, when there is the same type name in step112, the resource evaluation value of the individual user is added to the total evaluation value, and the number of request is also incremented by one request.

In step114, when the decision whether the same type name exists or not in step112is No, the resource evaluation value of the individual user is stored as-is as the total evaluation value, and the number of request is counted as one and stored.

In step115, the total evaluation value and number of requests determined or calculated in step113or114are stored in the original data read in step111or117in the reliability judgment result storage table140. Thus, the reliabilities of the resources of the same type name are added one after another. In step116, decision is made of whether all data is completely read. In step117, when all data is not completely read in step116, the next data in the acquisition list table130is read and the process returns to step112.

In step118, the evaluation values of all data are completely added and divided by the number of requests to produce an average evaluation value.

As the number of samples increases, the reliability of the evaluation value becomes higher.

FIG. 12is a flowchart showing the flow of processing up to the end of the inquiry process that changes depending on whether the user orders the resource or not according to the resource reliability judgment result obtained inFIG. 11.

In step121, decision is made of whether the user applies for the use of the resource of interest or not. In step122, decision is made of whether the user who enquired is a registered user. In step123, the user who is not registered yet is asked whether user registration is desired or not.

If the user registration is not made, the user cannot be offered the resource and the process jumps to step128where the registration status is made no.

In step124, the utilization performance record storage14having the performance evaluation table40, the customer enterprise table50and the total evaluation table60is supplied to the user terminal11who newly desires user registration, and a user number is issued to the user.

In step125, the receiving section18asks the supply section23in the Web server20to examine and decide whether the resource applied for in step121can be offered.

In step126, when the decision in step125is yes, namely, the resource can be offered, the procedure for supplying the resource of interest is sent from the Web server20to the user terminal11.

In addition, the yes/no status is turned yes.

In step127, when the decision in step125is no, namely, there is no resource that can be offered, the user terminal11is asked if it will apply for the next candidate. If the decision in step127is yes, the next candidate is selected from the candidates141of the judgment result table140and the process jumps to step125.

If the decision in step127is no, namely, when the user terminal does not apply for the next candidate, the process jumpss to step128where the yes/no status is made no.

In step128, the yes/no status is stored in the yes/no98of the front desk table90.

FIG. 13is a diagram showing an example of the data structure of the acquisition list table130that lists the data structure of the data acquisition section16for acquiring data of the utilization performance record storage14of the user having used a resource and also acquiring data held by the Web server20in the IDC.

The table130includes, for example, performance record number131, enterprise code132, type or model name133, performance evaluation value134, customer (business deal) evaluation value135and total evaluation value136.

FIG. 14is a diagram showing an example of the data structure of the judgment result table140that lists the data structure of the reliability judge section17which makes the reliability judgment on the rearranged or extracted data of the acquisition list table130.

FIG. 15is a diagram showing an example of information displayed on the user terminal11.

For example, the user who conducted reliability examination in the past and made a user registration enters the user number in the user number151, selects the resource type to be reliability-examined from the pull-down menu of the resource type152, enters an item name of condition in condition153in order to set an item as a condition, enters a plurality of conditions, if desired, with a space thereamong. The user further enters, with respect to the items set in the condition153and at respective corresponding portions, enterprise name in maker154if the user wishes to specifies a maker name, enters a type or model name in type155if the type or model name is desired to be specified, enters a desired price in price156if the price range is to be inputted, enters a key word of desired condition in other157, and push a send button158which causes the request for resource reliability examination to be transmitted from the user terminal11to the receiving section18.

Note that priority order is given as condition-1, condition-2, condition-3. . . in order of being entered in the condition153

According to the invention, the resource that fits to the needs of the user can be decided and assigned by judging the reliability of the resource which is necessary when using the Web service.

In addition, the companies that hold the resources or companies that develop resources can improve the performance of the resources according to that information.

According to the invention, the resource that meets the needs of the user can be determined and assigned by judging the reliability of the resource which is necessary when using the Web service.