Patent ID: 8914370

Claim:
A method for generating rules for classifying a plurality of electronic structured documents to which a same schema is applied, the method comprising a computer performing steps of: determining one or more variable portions defined by the schema by scanning the schema; acquiring respective feature values of the determined variable portions from each of the plurality of structured documents and associating the structured document, from which the feature values are acquired, with the acquired feature values, wherein acquiring comprises reading content of the structured document while checking the schema; and generating the rules on the basis of the feature values associated with the structured document, wherein: the step of determining one or more variable portions includes the step of determining one or more elements included in a tree structure defined by the schema; the step of associating the structured document with the acquired feature values includes the step of acquiring respective feature values of the determined elements from each of the plurality of structured documents; and each of the feature values of the determined elements is a number of repetitions of an element included in the tree structure, except when an element is included in at least two nodes belonging to a same definition on the schema, each of the feature values of the determined elements is an average of respective numbers of repetitions of the element in the at least two nodes.