Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Hisashi Sato

Katsuya Yamashita

Hideyuki Fujiwara

Mitsuhiro Yamamoto

Shigeto Nakayama

Yoshitaka Masuzawa

The invention provides a system that associates data files with one another effectively to visually represent a relation among the data files and allows a user to easily understand relationship of contents of the data files. The system determines whether there is a parent data file for a selected retrieval object data file with reference to a contract association table and, if the parent data file is present, changes the retrieval object to the parent data file and repeats the processing. If the parent data file is not present, the system stores a present retrieval object data file as display data, that is, store a top data file as display data. Then, the system retrieves all data files associated with the top data file, stores the data files as display data, generates a relation diagram of the data files, and transmits the relation diagram to a user terminal.

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Iruma, Japan

Hisashi Sato