WO2002097674A2 - Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters - Google Patents

Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters Download PDF

Info

Publication number
WO2002097674A2
WO2002097674A2 PCT/US2002/016186 US0216186W WO02097674A2 WO 2002097674 A2 WO2002097674 A2 WO 2002097674A2 US 0216186 W US0216186 W US 0216186W WO 02097674 A2 WO02097674 A2 WO 02097674A2
Authority
WO
WIPO (PCT)
Prior art keywords
collation
weight value
weight
primary
collation element
Prior art date
Application number
PCT/US2002/016186
Other languages
French (fr)
Other versions
WO2002097674A3 (en
Inventor
Ching-Lan Ho
Jianping Yang
Original Assignee
Oracle Corporation
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Oracle Corporation filed Critical Oracle Corporation
Priority to CN02809865.XA priority Critical patent/CN1531692B/en
Priority to AU2002311984A priority patent/AU2002311984A1/en
Priority to JP2003500784A priority patent/JP4685348B2/en
Publication of WO2002097674A2 publication Critical patent/WO2002097674A2/en
Publication of WO2002097674A3 publication Critical patent/WO2002097674A3/en

Links

Classifications

    • G—PHYSICS
    • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
    • G06F7/00—Methods or arrangements for processing data by operating upon the order or content of the data handled
    • G06F7/02—Comparing digital values
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
    • G06F7/00—Methods or arrangements for processing data by operating upon the order or content of the data handled
    • G06F7/22—Arrangements for sorting or merging computer data on continuous record carriers, e.g. tape, drum, disc
    • G06F7/24—Sorting, i.e. extracting data from one or more carriers, rearranging the data in numerical or other ordered sequence, and rerecording the sorted data on the original carrier or on a different carrier or set of carriers sorting methods in general
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
    • G06F2207/00—Indexing scheme relating to methods or arrangements for processing data by operating upon the order or content of the data handled
    • G06F2207/02—Indexing scheme relating to groups G06F7/02 - G06F7/026
    • G06F2207/025—String search, i.e. pattern matching, e.g. find identical word or best match in a string
    • Y—GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
    • Y10—TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC
    • Y10S—TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
    • Y10S707/00—Data processing: database and file management or data structures
    • Y10S707/99931—Database or file accessing
    • Y10S707/99933—Query processing, i.e. searching
    • Y10S707/99934—Query formulation, input preparation, or translation
    • Y—GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
    • Y10—TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC
    • Y10S—TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
    • Y10S707/00—Data processing: database and file management or data structures
    • Y10S707/99931—Database or file accessing
    • Y10S707/99937—Sorting

Definitions

  • the present invention relates to the process of indexing and sorting data within a database system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for providing an efficient collation element structure for encoding sorting weights for a large number of characters.
  • Multi-lingual sorting is typically accomplished by converting strings of characters into corresponding strings of collation elements (these strings are also known as sorting keys), and then comparing the strings of collation elements to perform the sorting operation. This conversion process is typically accomplished by looking up characters in a collation weight table that contains a corresponding collation weight for each character.
  • Unicode Technical Report No. 10 specifies a collation element structure that includes a 16-bit primary weight value followed by an eight-bit secondary weight value and an eight-bit tertiary weight value.
  • the primary weight value identifies a character, while the secondary weight value specifies an accent on the character, and the tertiary weight value specifies case information (and possibly related punctuation) for the character.
  • the primary weight value may specify that a character is an "a”
  • the secondary value specifies that the character has an accent "a”
  • the tertiary value specifies that the character is upper case "A”.
  • a comparison function typically compares the primary weights first.
  • the comparison function compares the secondary weights. If both primary and secondary weights match, the comparison function compares the tertiary weights.
  • Report No. 10 can only encode 65,536 different characters. However, it is becoming necessary to provide more that 65,536 characters. This can be accomplished by increasing the size of the primary weight value to 32 bits (4 bytes). However, increasing the size of the primary weight value from 16 to 32 bits has a number of disadvantages: (1) more memory is required to build a linguistic index to support the
  • One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for facilitating use of a collation element that supports a large number of characters.
  • the system operates by receiving the collation element and reading a primary weight value from a primary weight field within the collation element. If the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the system reads an additional portion of the primary weight value from both a secondary weight field and a tertiary weight field within the collation element. On the other hand, if the primary weight value is not within the reserved set of values, the system reads a secondary weight value from the secondary weight field, and also reads a tertiary weight value from the tertiary weight field. In one embodiment of the present invention, if the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the system sets the secondary weight value to a secondary default value, and sets the tertiary weight value to a tertiary default value.
  • the collation element adheres to the Unicode standard.
  • the primary weight value identifies a character.
  • the secondary weight value specifies an accent on the character, and the tertiary weight value can specify case information for the character.
  • the collation element is four bytes in size, of which the primary weight field is two bytes, the secondary weight field is one byte and the tertiary weight field is one byte, unless a value in the primary weight field belongs to the reserved set of values, in which case the primary weight field takes up all four bytes of the collation element.
  • the reserved set of values for the primary weight value includes hexidecimal values OxFFFO-OxFFFF.
  • the collation element is taken from a collation weight table that is used to map characters to collation weights in order to establish an ordering between strings of characters.
  • the system additionally constructs a sorting key for a string by reading each character in the string and looking up a corresponding collation element for each character from the collation weight table. The system subsequently adds the corresponding collation element for each character to the sorting key. Note that if this sorting key is associated with a record in a database, the sorting key can used to construct a linguistic index for the database.
  • FIG. 1 illustrates a computer system with a database in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 2 illustrates alternative structures for a collation element in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 3 A illustrates how a sorting key is created in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 3B is a flow chart illustrating the process of creating a sorting key in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating the process of reading a collation element in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
  • a computer readable storage medium which may be any device or medium that can store code and/or data for use by a computer system. This includes, but is not limited to, magnetic and optical storage devices such as disk drives, magnetic tape,
  • CDs compact discs
  • DVDs digital versatile discs or digital video discs
  • computer instruction signals embodied in a transmission medium (with or without a carrier wave upon which the signals are modulated).
  • the transmission medium may include a communications network, such as the Internet.
  • FIG. 1 illustrates a computer system 102 with a database 104 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
  • Computer system 102 can generally include any type of computer system, including, but not limited to, a computer system based on a microprocessor, a mainframe computer, a digital signal processor, a portable computing device, a personal organizer, a device controller, and a computational engine within an appliance.
  • Database 104 can include any type of system for storing data in non-volatile storage. This includes, but is not limited to, systems based upon magnetic, optical, and magneto-optical storage devices, as well as storage devices based on flash memory and/or battery-backed up memory.
  • Database 104 includes a data file 106 comprised of a collection of collection of records, which are stored in insertion order. Data file 106 can be referenced through one or more indexes, such as index 108, which specifies an ordering for the records in data file 106. This ordering is typically determined by sorting an associated target column in data file 106.
  • each character string in the target column is first converted into a sorting key by looking up characters in collation weight table 1 10.
  • collation weight table 1 10 is simply an array that contains a collation element for each possible character. Structure of Collation Element
  • FIG. 2 illustrates alternative structures for a collation element 204 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. As illustrated in FIG. 2, collation element 204 is produced by performing a lookup into collation weight table 1 10.
  • collation element 204 occupies four bytes of data, and can have one of two forms.
  • the first two bytes of collation element 204 contain primary weight field 206, while the third byte contains secondary weight field 208 and the fourth byte contains tertiary weight field 210.
  • the first two bytes of collation element 204 contain a reserved value in the range OxFFFO-OxFFFF. This reserved value indicates that the third and fourth bytes of collation element 204 contain an extended portion of the primary weight field, instead of the secondary and tertiary weight values. In this case, the secondary and tertiary weight values are set to default values.
  • the second form supports more than 1 ,000,000 different characters because each of the 16 possible values OxFFFO-OXFFFF in the first and second bytes of collation element 204 is associated with 16 bits or 65,536 possible values in the third and fourth bytes of collation element 204.
  • the secondary and tertiary weight values can be set to default values because new characters with identifiers greater than 65,536 are Chinese Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, mainly Han and Hangul Jamo characters, and there are no accent and case differences between Han/Hangul Jamo characters.
  • CJK Chinese Japanese and Korean
  • FIG. 3A illustrates how a sorting key is created in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
  • a string 302 is converted character- by-character into a string of collation elements (weights) that comprise sorting key
  • FIG. 3B is a flow chart illustrating the process of creating a sorting key 304 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. For each character 202 in a string 302, the system reads character 202 (step 306) and looks up a collation element
  • step 308 The system then adds collation element 204 to sorting key 304 (step 310).
  • FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating the process of reading a collation element
  • the system starts by receiving collation element 204 during a sorting process or some other operation requiring comparisons between sorting keys (step 402). Next, the system determines if the first two (higher order) bytes of collation element 204 contain a reserved value, which is greater than or equal to OxFFFO (step 404). If so, the system takes the primary weight value to be all four bytes of collation element 204, and the secondary and tertiary weight values are set to default values (step 406).
  • the system sets the primary weight value to be the first and second bytes of collation element 204. This is accomplished by shifting collation element 204 by 16 bits to the right, and then taking the remaining two bytes as the primary weight value.
  • the secondary weight value is taken from the third (second to lowest order) byte of collation element 204. This is accomplished by shifting collation element 204 right by eight bits and taking the secondary weight value to be the lower order byte of the remaining word.
  • the tertiary weight value is taken from the fourth (lowest order) byte of collation element 204 (step 408).

Abstract

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for facilitating use of a collation element that supports a large number of characters. The system operates by receiving the collation element and reading a primary weight value from a primary weight field within the collation element. If the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the system reads an additional portion of the primary weight value from both a secondary weight field and a tertiary weight field within the collation element. On the other hand, if the primary weight value is not within the reserved set of values, the system reads a secondary weight value from the secondary weight field, and also reads a tertiary weight value from the tertiary weight field.

Description

EFFICIENT COLLATION ELEMENT
STRUCTURE FOR HANDLING LARGE
NUMBERS OF CHARACTERS
Inventors: Ching-Lan Ho and Jianping Yang
BACKGROUND
Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the process of indexing and sorting data within a database system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for providing an efficient collation element structure for encoding sorting weights for a large number of characters.
Related Art One challenge in developing a database system is to support sorting for different languages. For example, some databases allow Japanese customers to specify the sorting method as "Japanese", while French customers specify the sorting method as "French". However, with the worldwide deployment of Internet technologies, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to provide multi- lingual capabilities in their software in order to expand their businesses globally. As the data that is stored in databases becomes increasingly more multilingual, database users are increasingly more interested in using a single sort whose order is good for most languages.
Unfortunately, there can be thousands of different characters in a multi-lingual sort, and this causes the data structures involved in performing the multi-lingual sort to consume a lot of memory. Moreover, it can be hard to compact these data structures without degrading performance.
Multi-lingual sorting is typically accomplished by converting strings of characters into corresponding strings of collation elements (these strings are also known as sorting keys), and then comparing the strings of collation elements to perform the sorting operation. This conversion process is typically accomplished by looking up characters in a collation weight table that contains a corresponding collation weight for each character.
Unicode Technical Report No. 10 (from the Unicode Consortium) specifies a collation element structure that includes a 16-bit primary weight value followed by an eight-bit secondary weight value and an eight-bit tertiary weight value. The primary weight value identifies a character, while the secondary weight value specifies an accent on the character, and the tertiary weight value specifies case information (and possibly related punctuation) for the character. For example, the primary weight value may specify that a character is an "a", while the secondary value specifies that the character has an accent "a", and the tertiary value specifies that the character is upper case "A".
Note that a comparison function typically compares the primary weights first.
If the primary weights match, the comparison function compares the secondary weights. If both primary and secondary weights match, the comparison function compares the tertiary weights.
Note that the 16-bit primary weight value specified by Unicode Technical
Report No. 10 can only encode 65,536 different characters. However, it is becoming necessary to provide more that 65,536 characters. This can be accomplished by increasing the size of the primary weight value to 32 bits (4 bytes). However, increasing the size of the primary weight value from 16 to 32 bits has a number of disadvantages: (1) more memory is required to build a linguistic index to support the
32-bit primary weight value; (2) access time to the linguistic index is increased; (3) more memory is required to store strings of collation elements; and (4) more computational operations are required to compare sorting keys. What is needed is a method and an apparatus for using an efficient collation element structure that can handle a large number of characters without the above- mentioned problems.
SUMMARY
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for facilitating use of a collation element that supports a large number of characters. The system operates by receiving the collation element and reading a primary weight value from a primary weight field within the collation element. If the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the system reads an additional portion of the primary weight value from both a secondary weight field and a tertiary weight field within the collation element. On the other hand, if the primary weight value is not within the reserved set of values, the system reads a secondary weight value from the secondary weight field, and also reads a tertiary weight value from the tertiary weight field. In one embodiment of the present invention, if the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the system sets the secondary weight value to a secondary default value, and sets the tertiary weight value to a tertiary default value.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the collation element adheres to the Unicode standard. In one embodiment of the present invention, the primary weight value identifies a character. Furthermore, the secondary weight value specifies an accent on the character, and the tertiary weight value can specify case information for the character.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the collation element is four bytes in size, of which the primary weight field is two bytes, the secondary weight field is one byte and the tertiary weight field is one byte, unless a value in the primary weight field belongs to the reserved set of values, in which case the primary weight field takes up all four bytes of the collation element.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the reserved set of values for the primary weight value includes hexidecimal values OxFFFO-OxFFFF. In one embodiment of the present invention, the collation element is taken from a collation weight table that is used to map characters to collation weights in order to establish an ordering between strings of characters.
In a variation on this embodiment, the system additionally constructs a sorting key for a string by reading each character in the string and looking up a corresponding collation element for each character from the collation weight table. The system subsequently adds the corresponding collation element for each character to the sorting key. Note that if this sorting key is associated with a record in a database, the sorting key can used to construct a linguistic index for the database.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES
FIG. 1 illustrates a computer system with a database in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 illustrates alternative structures for a collation element in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 A illustrates how a sorting key is created in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3B is a flow chart illustrating the process of creating a sorting key in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating the process of reading a collation element in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
The following description is presented to enable any person skilled in the art to make and use the invention, and is provided in the context of a particular application and its requirements. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the general principles defined herein may be applied to other embodiments and applications without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Thus, the present invention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown, but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and features disclosed herein.
The data structures and code described in this detailed description are typically stored on a computer readable storage medium, which may be any device or medium that can store code and/or data for use by a computer system. This includes, but is not limited to, magnetic and optical storage devices such as disk drives, magnetic tape,
CDs (compact discs) and DVDs (digital versatile discs or digital video discs), and computer instruction signals embodied in a transmission medium (with or without a carrier wave upon which the signals are modulated). For example, the transmission medium may include a communications network, such as the Internet.
Computer System
FIG. 1 illustrates a computer system 102 with a database 104 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Computer system 102 can generally include any type of computer system, including, but not limited to, a computer system based on a microprocessor, a mainframe computer, a digital signal processor, a portable computing device, a personal organizer, a device controller, and a computational engine within an appliance.
Database 104 can include any type of system for storing data in non-volatile storage. This includes, but is not limited to, systems based upon magnetic, optical, and magneto-optical storage devices, as well as storage devices based on flash memory and/or battery-backed up memory. Database 104 includes a data file 106 comprised of a collection of collection of records, which are stored in insertion order. Data file 106 can be referenced through one or more indexes, such as index 108, which specifies an ordering for the records in data file 106. This ordering is typically determined by sorting an associated target column in data file 106. In order for this sorting to satisfy a specific linguistic sorting order, each character string in the target column is first converted into a sorting key by looking up characters in collation weight table 1 10. Note that collation weight table 1 10 is simply an array that contains a collation element for each possible character. Structure of Collation Element
FIG. 2 illustrates alternative structures for a collation element 204 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. As illustrated in FIG. 2, collation element 204 is produced by performing a lookup into collation weight table 1 10.
In the illustrated embodiment, collation element 204 occupies four bytes of data, and can have one of two forms. In a first form, the first two bytes of collation element 204 contain primary weight field 206, while the third byte contains secondary weight field 208 and the fourth byte contains tertiary weight field 210.
In a second form, the first two bytes of collation element 204 contain a reserved value in the range OxFFFO-OxFFFF. This reserved value indicates that the third and fourth bytes of collation element 204 contain an extended portion of the primary weight field, instead of the secondary and tertiary weight values. In this case, the secondary and tertiary weight values are set to default values.
Note that the second form supports more than 1 ,000,000 different characters because each of the 16 possible values OxFFFO-OXFFFF in the first and second bytes of collation element 204 is associated with 16 bits or 65,536 possible values in the third and fourth bytes of collation element 204. Also note that the secondary and tertiary weight values can be set to default values because new characters with identifiers greater than 65,536 are Chinese Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, mainly Han and Hangul Jamo characters, and there are no accent and case differences between Han/Hangul Jamo characters. Moreover, even in Far East Asia, people always order Latin-based letters and numerical characters before CJK characters.
Creating a Sorting Key
FIG. 3A illustrates how a sorting key is created in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 3A, a string 302 is converted character- by-character into a string of collation elements (weights) that comprise sorting key
304 by looking up the individual characters in collation weight table 1 10.
FIG. 3B is a flow chart illustrating the process of creating a sorting key 304 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. For each character 202 in a string 302, the system reads character 202 (step 306) and looks up a collation element
204 for character 202 in collation weight table 1 10 (step 308). The system then adds collation element 204 to sorting key 304 (step 310).
Reading a Collation Element FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating the process of reading a collation element
204 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The system starts by receiving collation element 204 during a sorting process or some other operation requiring comparisons between sorting keys (step 402). Next, the system determines if the first two (higher order) bytes of collation element 204 contain a reserved value, which is greater than or equal to OxFFFO (step 404). If so, the system takes the primary weight value to be all four bytes of collation element 204, and the secondary and tertiary weight values are set to default values (step 406).
If the first two bytes of collation element 204 do not contain a reserved value, the system sets the primary weight value to be the first and second bytes of collation element 204. This is accomplished by shifting collation element 204 by 16 bits to the right, and then taking the remaining two bytes as the primary weight value. Next, the secondary weight value is taken from the third (second to lowest order) byte of collation element 204. This is accomplished by shifting collation element 204 right by eight bits and taking the secondary weight value to be the lower order byte of the remaining word. Finally, the tertiary weight value is taken from the fourth (lowest order) byte of collation element 204 (step 408).
The foregoing descriptions of embodiments of the present invention have been presented for purposes of illustration and description only. They are not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the present invention to the forms disclosed. Accordingly, many modifications and variations will be apparent to practitioners skilled in the art. Additionally, the above disclosure is not intended to limit the present invention. The scope of the present invention is defined by the appended claims.

Claims

What Is Claimed Is:
1. A method for facilitating use of a collation element that supports a large number of characters, comprising: receiving the collation element; reading a primary weight value from a primary weight field within the collation element; if the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, reading an additional portion of the primary weight value from a secondary weight field and a tertiary weight field within the collation element; and if the primary weight value is not within the reserved set of values, reading a secondary weight value from the secondary weight field within the collation element, and reading a tertiary weight value from the tertiary weight field within the collation element.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein if the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the method additionally comprises: setting the secondary weight value to a secondary default value; and setting the tertiary weight value to a tertiary default value.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the collation element adheres to a structure specified in Unicode Technical Report No. 10.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the primary weight value identifies a character; wherein the secondary weight value can specify an accent on the character; and wherein the tertiary weight value can specify case information for the character.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the collation element is four bytes in size, of which the primary weight field is two bytes, the secondary weight field is one byte and the tertiary weight field is one byte, unless a value in the primary weight field belongs to the reserved set of values, in which case the primary weight field takes up all four bytes of the collation element.
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the reserved set of values for the primary weight value includes hexidecimal values OxFFFO-OxFFFF.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the collation element is taken from a collation weight table that is used to map characters to collation weights in order to establish an ordering between strings of characters.
8. The method of claim 7, further comprising constructing a sorting key for a string by: reading each character in the string; looking up a corresponding collation element for each character from the collation weight table; and adding the corresponding collation element for each character to the sorting key.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein the sorting key is associated with a record within a database; and wherein the sorting key is used to construct a linguistic index for the database.
10. A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method for facilitating use of a collation element that supports a large number of characters, the method comprising: receiving the collation element; reading a primary weight value from a primary weight field within the collation element; if the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, reading an additional portion of the primary weight value from a secondary weight field and a tertiary weight field within the collation element; and if the primary weight value is not within the reserved set of values, reading a secondary weight value from the secondary weight field within the collation element, and reading a tertiary weight value from the tertiary weight field within the collation element.
1 1. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein if the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the method additionally comprises: setting the secondary weight value to a secondary default value; and setting the tertiary weight value to a tertiary default value.
12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the collation element adheres to a structure specified in Unicode Technical Report No. 10.
13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the primary weight value identifies a character; wherein the secondary weight value can specify an accent on the character; and wherein the tertiary weight value can specify case information for the character.
14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the collation element is four bytes in size, of which the primary weight field is two bytes, the secondary weight field is one byte and the tertiary weight field is one byte, unless a value in the primary weight field belongs to the reserved set of values, in which case the primary weight field takes up all four bytes of the collation element.
15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the reserved set of values for the primary weight value includes hexidecimal values OxFFFO-OxFFFF.
16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the collation element is taken from a collation weight table that is used to map characters to collation weights in order to establish an ordering between strings of characters.
17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the method further comprises constructing a sorting key for a string by: reading each character in the string; looking up a corresponding collation element for each character from the collation weight table; and adding the corresponding collation element for each character to the sorting key.
18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the sorting key is associated with a record within a database; and wherein the sorting key is used to construct a linguistic index for the database.
19. An apparatus that facilitates use of a collation element that supports a large number of characters, comprising: an assignment mechanism that is configured to read a primary weight value from a primary weight field within the collation element; wherein if the primary weight value falls within a reserved set of values, the assignment mechanism is configured to read an additional portion of the primary weight value from a secondary weight field and a tertiary weight field within the collation element; and wherein if the primary weight value is not within the reserved set of values, the assignment mechanism is configured to, read a secondary weight value from the secondary weight field within the collation element, and to read a tertiary weight value from the tertiary weight field within the collation element.
20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein if the primary weight value falls within the reserved set of values, the assignment mechanism is configured to: set the secondary weight value to a secondary default value; and to set the tertiary weight value to a tertiary default value.
21. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the collation element adheres to a structure specified in Unicode Technical Report No. 10.
22. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the primary weight value identifies a character; wherein the secondary weight value can specify an accent on the character; and wherein the tertiary weight value can specify case information for the character.
23. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the collation element is four bytes in size, of which the primary weight field is two bytes, the secondary weight field is one byte and the tertiary weight field is one byte, unless a value in the primary weight field belongs to the reserved set of values, in which case the primary weight field takes up all four bytes of the collation element.
24. The apparatus of claim 23, wherein the reserved set of values for the primary weight value includes hexidecimal values OxFFFO-OxFFFF.
25. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the collation element is taken from a collation weight table that is used to map characters to collation weights in order to establish an ordering between strings of characters.
26. The apparatus of claim 25, further comprising a key construction mechanism for constructing a sorting key for a string, wherein the key construction mechanism is configured to: read each character in the string; lookup a corresponding collation element for each character from the collation weight table; and to add the corresponding collation element for each character to the sorting key.
27. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the sorting key is associated with a record within a database; and wherein the sorting key is used to construct a linguistic index for the database.
PCT/US2002/016186 2001-05-31 2002-05-22 Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters WO2002097674A2 (en)

Priority Applications (3)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
CN02809865.XA CN1531692B (en) 2001-05-31 2002-05-22 Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters
AU2002311984A AU2002311984A1 (en) 2001-05-31 2002-05-22 Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters
JP2003500784A JP4685348B2 (en) 2001-05-31 2002-05-22 Efficient collating element structure for handling large numbers of characters

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US09/872,552 US6877003B2 (en) 2001-05-31 2001-05-31 Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters
US09/872,552 2001-05-31

Publications (2)

Publication Number Publication Date
WO2002097674A2 true WO2002097674A2 (en) 2002-12-05
WO2002097674A3 WO2002097674A3 (en) 2004-02-19

Family

ID=25359815

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
PCT/US2002/016186 WO2002097674A2 (en) 2001-05-31 2002-05-22 Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters

Country Status (5)

Country Link
US (1) US6877003B2 (en)
JP (1) JP4685348B2 (en)
CN (1) CN1531692B (en)
AU (1) AU2002311984A1 (en)
WO (1) WO2002097674A2 (en)

Cited By (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
JP2006134332A (en) * 2004-11-05 2006-05-25 Microsoft Corp Automated collation creation

Families Citing this family (125)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US8645137B2 (en) 2000-03-16 2014-02-04 Apple Inc. Fast, language-independent method for user authentication by voice
CA2390849A1 (en) * 2002-06-18 2003-12-18 Ibm Canada Limited-Ibm Canada Limitee System and method for sorting data
US7359905B2 (en) * 2003-06-24 2008-04-15 Microsoft Corporation Resource classification and prioritization system
US7941311B2 (en) * 2003-10-22 2011-05-10 Microsoft Corporation System and method for linguistic collation
US7676476B2 (en) * 2004-08-25 2010-03-09 Microsoft Corporation Data types with incorporated collation information
US20060212449A1 (en) * 2005-03-21 2006-09-21 Novy Alon R J Method and apparatus for generating relevance-sensitive collation keys
CN100393071C (en) * 2005-06-30 2008-06-04 杭州华三通信技术有限公司 Method for configuring access control list and its application
US8677377B2 (en) 2005-09-08 2014-03-18 Apple Inc. Method and apparatus for building an intelligent automated assistant
US9318108B2 (en) 2010-01-18 2016-04-19 Apple Inc. Intelligent automated assistant
US8977255B2 (en) 2007-04-03 2015-03-10 Apple Inc. Method and system for operating a multi-function portable electronic device using voice-activation
US9053089B2 (en) 2007-10-02 2015-06-09 Apple Inc. Part-of-speech tagging using latent analogy
US8620662B2 (en) * 2007-11-20 2013-12-31 Apple Inc. Context-aware unit selection
US9330720B2 (en) 2008-01-03 2016-05-03 Apple Inc. Methods and apparatus for altering audio output signals
US8996376B2 (en) 2008-04-05 2015-03-31 Apple Inc. Intelligent text-to-speech conversion
US10496753B2 (en) 2010-01-18 2019-12-03 Apple Inc. Automatically adapting user interfaces for hands-free interaction
JP5391583B2 (en) * 2008-05-29 2014-01-15 富士通株式会社 SEARCH DEVICE, GENERATION DEVICE, PROGRAM, SEARCH METHOD, AND GENERATION METHOD
US20100030549A1 (en) 2008-07-31 2010-02-04 Lee Michael M Mobile device having human language translation capability with positional feedback
US9959870B2 (en) 2008-12-11 2018-05-01 Apple Inc. Speech recognition involving a mobile device
US8140517B2 (en) * 2009-04-06 2012-03-20 International Business Machines Corporation Database query optimization using weight mapping to qualify an index
US9858925B2 (en) 2009-06-05 2018-01-02 Apple Inc. Using context information to facilitate processing of commands in a virtual assistant
US10241644B2 (en) 2011-06-03 2019-03-26 Apple Inc. Actionable reminder entries
US10255566B2 (en) 2011-06-03 2019-04-09 Apple Inc. Generating and processing task items that represent tasks to perform
US10241752B2 (en) 2011-09-30 2019-03-26 Apple Inc. Interface for a virtual digital assistant
US9431006B2 (en) 2009-07-02 2016-08-30 Apple Inc. Methods and apparatuses for automatic speech recognition
US10679605B2 (en) 2010-01-18 2020-06-09 Apple Inc. Hands-free list-reading by intelligent automated assistant
US10553209B2 (en) 2010-01-18 2020-02-04 Apple Inc. Systems and methods for hands-free notification summaries
US10276170B2 (en) 2010-01-18 2019-04-30 Apple Inc. Intelligent automated assistant
US10705794B2 (en) 2010-01-18 2020-07-07 Apple Inc. Automatically adapting user interfaces for hands-free interaction
DE202011111062U1 (en) 2010-01-25 2019-02-19 Newvaluexchange Ltd. Device and system for a digital conversation management platform
US8682667B2 (en) 2010-02-25 2014-03-25 Apple Inc. User profiling for selecting user specific voice input processing information
US10762293B2 (en) 2010-12-22 2020-09-01 Apple Inc. Using parts-of-speech tagging and named entity recognition for spelling correction
US9262612B2 (en) 2011-03-21 2016-02-16 Apple Inc. Device access using voice authentication
US10057736B2 (en) 2011-06-03 2018-08-21 Apple Inc. Active transport based notifications
US9509757B2 (en) * 2011-06-30 2016-11-29 Google Inc. Parallel sorting key generation
US8994660B2 (en) 2011-08-29 2015-03-31 Apple Inc. Text correction processing
US10134385B2 (en) 2012-03-02 2018-11-20 Apple Inc. Systems and methods for name pronunciation
US9483461B2 (en) 2012-03-06 2016-11-01 Apple Inc. Handling speech synthesis of content for multiple languages
US9280610B2 (en) 2012-05-14 2016-03-08 Apple Inc. Crowd sourcing information to fulfill user requests
US9721563B2 (en) 2012-06-08 2017-08-01 Apple Inc. Name recognition system
US9495129B2 (en) 2012-06-29 2016-11-15 Apple Inc. Device, method, and user interface for voice-activated navigation and browsing of a document
US9576574B2 (en) 2012-09-10 2017-02-21 Apple Inc. Context-sensitive handling of interruptions by intelligent digital assistant
US9547647B2 (en) 2012-09-19 2017-01-17 Apple Inc. Voice-based media searching
CN103827862B (en) * 2012-09-20 2017-09-01 株式会社东芝 Data processing equipment, data management system, data processing method
KR20230137475A (en) 2013-02-07 2023-10-04 애플 인크. Voice trigger for a digital assistant
US9368114B2 (en) 2013-03-14 2016-06-14 Apple Inc. Context-sensitive handling of interruptions
AU2014233517B2 (en) 2013-03-15 2017-05-25 Apple Inc. Training an at least partial voice command system
WO2014144579A1 (en) 2013-03-15 2014-09-18 Apple Inc. System and method for updating an adaptive speech recognition model
WO2014197334A2 (en) 2013-06-07 2014-12-11 Apple Inc. System and method for user-specified pronunciation of words for speech synthesis and recognition
WO2014197336A1 (en) 2013-06-07 2014-12-11 Apple Inc. System and method for detecting errors in interactions with a voice-based digital assistant
US9582608B2 (en) 2013-06-07 2017-02-28 Apple Inc. Unified ranking with entropy-weighted information for phrase-based semantic auto-completion
WO2014197335A1 (en) 2013-06-08 2014-12-11 Apple Inc. Interpreting and acting upon commands that involve sharing information with remote devices
US10176167B2 (en) 2013-06-09 2019-01-08 Apple Inc. System and method for inferring user intent from speech inputs
EP3937002A1 (en) 2013-06-09 2022-01-12 Apple Inc. Device, method, and graphical user interface for enabling conversation persistence across two or more instances of a digital assistant
AU2014278595B2 (en) 2013-06-13 2017-04-06 Apple Inc. System and method for emergency calls initiated by voice command
DE112014003653B4 (en) 2013-08-06 2024-04-18 Apple Inc. Automatically activate intelligent responses based on activities from remote devices
US9620105B2 (en) 2014-05-15 2017-04-11 Apple Inc. Analyzing audio input for efficient speech and music recognition
US10592095B2 (en) 2014-05-23 2020-03-17 Apple Inc. Instantaneous speaking of content on touch devices
US9502031B2 (en) 2014-05-27 2016-11-22 Apple Inc. Method for supporting dynamic grammars in WFST-based ASR
US9430463B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2016-08-30 Apple Inc. Exemplar-based natural language processing
US9734193B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2017-08-15 Apple Inc. Determining domain salience ranking from ambiguous words in natural speech
US10170123B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2019-01-01 Apple Inc. Intelligent assistant for home automation
US10289433B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2019-05-14 Apple Inc. Domain specific language for encoding assistant dialog
US10078631B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2018-09-18 Apple Inc. Entropy-guided text prediction using combined word and character n-gram language models
US9633004B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2017-04-25 Apple Inc. Better resolution when referencing to concepts
US9842101B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2017-12-12 Apple Inc. Predictive conversion of language input
AU2015266863B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2018-03-15 Apple Inc. Multi-command single utterance input method
US9760559B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2017-09-12 Apple Inc. Predictive text input
US9785630B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2017-10-10 Apple Inc. Text prediction using combined word N-gram and unigram language models
US9715875B2 (en) 2014-05-30 2017-07-25 Apple Inc. Reducing the need for manual start/end-pointing and trigger phrases
US9338493B2 (en) 2014-06-30 2016-05-10 Apple Inc. Intelligent automated assistant for TV user interactions
US10659851B2 (en) 2014-06-30 2020-05-19 Apple Inc. Real-time digital assistant knowledge updates
US10446141B2 (en) 2014-08-28 2019-10-15 Apple Inc. Automatic speech recognition based on user feedback
US9818400B2 (en) 2014-09-11 2017-11-14 Apple Inc. Method and apparatus for discovering trending terms in speech requests
US10789041B2 (en) 2014-09-12 2020-09-29 Apple Inc. Dynamic thresholds for always listening speech trigger
US9668121B2 (en) 2014-09-30 2017-05-30 Apple Inc. Social reminders
US9886432B2 (en) 2014-09-30 2018-02-06 Apple Inc. Parsimonious handling of word inflection via categorical stem + suffix N-gram language models
US10074360B2 (en) 2014-09-30 2018-09-11 Apple Inc. Providing an indication of the suitability of speech recognition
US10127911B2 (en) 2014-09-30 2018-11-13 Apple Inc. Speaker identification and unsupervised speaker adaptation techniques
US9646609B2 (en) 2014-09-30 2017-05-09 Apple Inc. Caching apparatus for serving phonetic pronunciations
US10552013B2 (en) 2014-12-02 2020-02-04 Apple Inc. Data detection
US9711141B2 (en) 2014-12-09 2017-07-18 Apple Inc. Disambiguating heteronyms in speech synthesis
US9865280B2 (en) 2015-03-06 2018-01-09 Apple Inc. Structured dictation using intelligent automated assistants
US9721566B2 (en) 2015-03-08 2017-08-01 Apple Inc. Competing devices responding to voice triggers
US9886953B2 (en) 2015-03-08 2018-02-06 Apple Inc. Virtual assistant activation
US10567477B2 (en) 2015-03-08 2020-02-18 Apple Inc. Virtual assistant continuity
US9899019B2 (en) 2015-03-18 2018-02-20 Apple Inc. Systems and methods for structured stem and suffix language models
US9842105B2 (en) 2015-04-16 2017-12-12 Apple Inc. Parsimonious continuous-space phrase representations for natural language processing
US10083688B2 (en) 2015-05-27 2018-09-25 Apple Inc. Device voice control for selecting a displayed affordance
US10127220B2 (en) 2015-06-04 2018-11-13 Apple Inc. Language identification from short strings
US10101822B2 (en) 2015-06-05 2018-10-16 Apple Inc. Language input correction
US9578173B2 (en) 2015-06-05 2017-02-21 Apple Inc. Virtual assistant aided communication with 3rd party service in a communication session
US10255907B2 (en) 2015-06-07 2019-04-09 Apple Inc. Automatic accent detection using acoustic models
US10186254B2 (en) 2015-06-07 2019-01-22 Apple Inc. Context-based endpoint detection
US11025565B2 (en) 2015-06-07 2021-06-01 Apple Inc. Personalized prediction of responses for instant messaging
US10671428B2 (en) 2015-09-08 2020-06-02 Apple Inc. Distributed personal assistant
US10747498B2 (en) 2015-09-08 2020-08-18 Apple Inc. Zero latency digital assistant
US9697820B2 (en) 2015-09-24 2017-07-04 Apple Inc. Unit-selection text-to-speech synthesis using concatenation-sensitive neural networks
US11010550B2 (en) 2015-09-29 2021-05-18 Apple Inc. Unified language modeling framework for word prediction, auto-completion and auto-correction
US10366158B2 (en) 2015-09-29 2019-07-30 Apple Inc. Efficient word encoding for recurrent neural network language models
US11587559B2 (en) 2015-09-30 2023-02-21 Apple Inc. Intelligent device identification
US10691473B2 (en) 2015-11-06 2020-06-23 Apple Inc. Intelligent automated assistant in a messaging environment
US10049668B2 (en) 2015-12-02 2018-08-14 Apple Inc. Applying neural network language models to weighted finite state transducers for automatic speech recognition
US10223066B2 (en) 2015-12-23 2019-03-05 Apple Inc. Proactive assistance based on dialog communication between devices
US10446143B2 (en) 2016-03-14 2019-10-15 Apple Inc. Identification of voice inputs providing credentials
US9934775B2 (en) 2016-05-26 2018-04-03 Apple Inc. Unit-selection text-to-speech synthesis based on predicted concatenation parameters
US9972304B2 (en) 2016-06-03 2018-05-15 Apple Inc. Privacy preserving distributed evaluation framework for embedded personalized systems
US10049663B2 (en) 2016-06-08 2018-08-14 Apple, Inc. Intelligent automated assistant for media exploration
DK179588B1 (en) 2016-06-09 2019-02-22 Apple Inc. Intelligent automated assistant in a home environment
US10067938B2 (en) 2016-06-10 2018-09-04 Apple Inc. Multilingual word prediction
US10586535B2 (en) 2016-06-10 2020-03-10 Apple Inc. Intelligent digital assistant in a multi-tasking environment
US10192552B2 (en) 2016-06-10 2019-01-29 Apple Inc. Digital assistant providing whispered speech
US10490187B2 (en) 2016-06-10 2019-11-26 Apple Inc. Digital assistant providing automated status report
US10509862B2 (en) 2016-06-10 2019-12-17 Apple Inc. Dynamic phrase expansion of language input
DK179049B1 (en) 2016-06-11 2017-09-18 Apple Inc Data driven natural language event detection and classification
DK179343B1 (en) 2016-06-11 2018-05-14 Apple Inc Intelligent task discovery
DK179415B1 (en) 2016-06-11 2018-06-14 Apple Inc Intelligent device arbitration and control
DK201670540A1 (en) 2016-06-11 2018-01-08 Apple Inc Application integration with a digital assistant
US10043516B2 (en) 2016-09-23 2018-08-07 Apple Inc. Intelligent automated assistant
US10593346B2 (en) 2016-12-22 2020-03-17 Apple Inc. Rank-reduced token representation for automatic speech recognition
DK201770439A1 (en) 2017-05-11 2018-12-13 Apple Inc. Offline personal assistant
DK179496B1 (en) 2017-05-12 2019-01-15 Apple Inc. USER-SPECIFIC Acoustic Models
DK179745B1 (en) 2017-05-12 2019-05-01 Apple Inc. SYNCHRONIZATION AND TASK DELEGATION OF A DIGITAL ASSISTANT
DK201770431A1 (en) 2017-05-15 2018-12-20 Apple Inc. Optimizing dialogue policy decisions for digital assistants using implicit feedback
DK201770432A1 (en) 2017-05-15 2018-12-21 Apple Inc. Hierarchical belief states for digital assistants
DK179560B1 (en) 2017-05-16 2019-02-18 Apple Inc. Far-field extension for digital assistant services

Family Cites Families (8)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CA1265623A (en) * 1987-06-11 1990-02-06 Eddy Lee Method of facilitating computer sorting
CA1280215C (en) * 1987-09-28 1991-02-12 Eddy Lee Multilingual ordered data retrieval system
US5551018A (en) * 1993-02-02 1996-08-27 Borland International, Inc. Method of storing national language support text by presorting followed by insertion sorting
US5485373A (en) * 1993-03-25 1996-01-16 Taligent, Inc. Language-sensitive text searching system with modified Boyer-Moore process
US5440482A (en) * 1993-03-25 1995-08-08 Taligent, Inc. Forward and reverse Boyer-Moore string searching of multilingual text having a defined collation order
US5675818A (en) * 1995-06-12 1997-10-07 Borland International, Inc. System and methods for improved sorting with national language support
US5873111A (en) * 1996-05-10 1999-02-16 Apple Computer, Inc. Method and system for collation in a processing system of a variety of distinct sets of information
US6381616B1 (en) * 1999-03-24 2002-04-30 Microsoft Corporation System and method for speeding up heterogeneous data access using predicate conversion

Non-Patent Citations (3)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Title
DAVIS M: "ICU Collation Design Documentation" INTERNET PUBLICATION, [Online] 31 May 2000 (2000-05-31), XP002249274 Retrieved from the Internet: <URL:http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~ checkout~/icuhtml/design/collation/ICU_col lation_design.htm?rev=1.11&content-type=te xt/plain> [retrieved on 2003-07-25] *
DAVIS MARK ET AL: "UNICODE TECHNICAL STANDARD #10, UNICODE COLLATION ALGORITHM" UNICODE TECHNICAL REPORT, [Online] 23 March 2001 (2001-03-23), XP002249276 Retrieved from the Internet: <URL:http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/t r10-8.html> [retrieved on 2003-07-25] cited in the application *
HO C ET AL: "Multilingual Collation and CJK Sorts in Oracle 9i " PROCEEDINGS OF 18TH INTERNATIONAL UNICODE CONFERENCE, [Online] 24 - 27 April 2001, XP002249275 HONG KONG Retrieved from the Internet: <URL:http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc18/pape rs.html> [retrieved on 2003-07-25] cited in the application *

Cited By (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
JP2006134332A (en) * 2004-11-05 2006-05-25 Microsoft Corp Automated collation creation

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
JP2005517221A (en) 2005-06-09
WO2002097674A3 (en) 2004-02-19
CN1531692B (en) 2010-12-08
US6877003B2 (en) 2005-04-05
CN1531692A (en) 2004-09-22
JP4685348B2 (en) 2011-05-18
AU2002311984A1 (en) 2002-12-09
US20020184251A1 (en) 2002-12-05

Similar Documents

Publication Publication Date Title
US6877003B2 (en) Efficient collation element structure for handling large numbers of characters
US7877364B2 (en) Method of storing and retrieving miniaturised data
TW312771B (en)
US7185018B2 (en) Method of storing and retrieving miniaturized data
US7512533B2 (en) Method and system of creating and using chinese language data and user-corrected data
JPH026252B2 (en)
TWI604318B (en) Method of data sorting
US20050251519A1 (en) Efficient language-dependent sorting of embedded numerics
JP2007042146A (en) Method and system of creating and using chinese data and user-corrected data
US20080319982A1 (en) Method and Apparatus for Manipulating Data Files
JP2001357031A (en) Method and system for converting unicode text into mixed code page
EP1691298B1 (en) Method and system of creating and using Chinese language data and user-corrected data
AU777314B2 (en) A method of storing and retrieving miniaturised data
Afzal et al. Urdu Computing Standards: Development of Urdu Zabta Takhti-WG2 N2413-2-SC2 N3589-2 (UZT) 1.01
JP4061283B2 (en) Apparatus, method and program for converting lexical data to data
JP2005275880A (en) Device, method and program for converting word and phrase into data
Nishimura The Retrieval System for the Stellar Bibliography in Japan
JPH03282961A (en) Mutual conversion dictionary system
JP2000029879A (en) Document retrieving device and controlling method
JPH01181123A (en) Information retrieving device

Legal Events

Date Code Title Description
AK Designated states

Kind code of ref document: A2

Designated state(s): AE AG AL AM AT AU AZ BA BB BG BR BY BZ CA CH CN CO CR CU CZ DE DK DM DZ EC EE ES FI GB GD GE GH GM HR HU ID IL IN IS JP KE KG KP KR KZ LC LK LR LS LT LU LV MA MD MG MK MN MW MX MZ NO NZ OM PH PL PT RO RU SD SE SG SI SK SL TJ TM TN TR TT TZ UA UG UZ VN YU ZA ZM ZW

AL Designated countries for regional patents

Kind code of ref document: A2

Designated state(s): GH GM KE LS MW MZ SD SL SZ TZ UG ZM ZW AM AZ BY KG KZ MD RU TJ TM AT BE CH CY DE DK ES FI FR GB GR IE IT LU MC NL PT SE TR BF BJ CF CG CI CM GA GN GQ GW ML MR NE SN TD TG

121 Ep: the epo has been informed by wipo that ep was designated in this application
DFPE Request for preliminary examination filed prior to expiration of 19th month from priority date (pct application filed before 20040101)
WWE Wipo information: entry into national phase

Ref document number: 2003500784

Country of ref document: JP

WWE Wipo information: entry into national phase

Ref document number: 02809865X

Country of ref document: CN

REG Reference to national code

Ref country code: DE

Ref legal event code: 8642

122 Ep: pct application non-entry in european phase