Patent ID: 8489568

Claim:
A data acquisition apparatus comprising: an input unit configured to input acquisition data specification information, secret data type specification information, and output format specification information, wherein a data type not to be output is specified collectively by the secret data type specification information, and the secret data type specification information specified part of the acquisition data specification information; an acquisition unit configured to acquire data specified by the acquisition data specification information from a database storing data corresponding to a data type; an output unit configured to output the acquired data in a format specified by the output format specification information; and a control unit configured to control at least one of the acquisition unit and the output unit based on the secret data type specification information so that data specified to be hidden by the secret data type specification information is not output; and wherein the description of the secret data type specification information is independent of the description of the output format specification information, the control unit controls the output unit to output predetermined data instead of the data specified to be hidden by the secret data type specification information, the predetermined data is not the data specified to be hidden by the secret data type specification information, but the predetermined data comprises a character string, and the overall shape of the character string suggests the secret data type without need to decode the secret data type from values of characters in the character string.