Patent ID: 6964011

Claim:
A document type definition generating method for generating a document type definition of a structured document containing document elements of a plurality of document element types, wherein each one of the plurality of document element types has a document element name and each document element has a start tag and an end tag, said method comprising: a physical structure judging step of judging a physical similarity between the document elements in the structured document, wherein the judging of the physical similarity is based on the physical position of the start tag of each document element in the structured document; a semantic structure judging step of judging a semantic similarity between the document elements by comparing a character string form located between the start tag and the end tag of each of the document elements; and a document type definition generating step of judging a similarity of the document element tags based on the results obtained in said physical structure judging step and said semantic structure judging step, and generating the document type definition unifying the document element names of similar document elements, said document type definition generating step includes a redundancy removing step, wherein the physical structure and the semantic structure of a plurality of document elements, having tags different in element name, are judged as being of the same document element type in said physical structure judging step and said semantic structure judging step, excluding one document element name from a document type definition generating object based on the judgment results obtained in said physical structure judging step and said semantic structure judging step.