JP2006164152A - Printing processing method and system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To improve the printing throughput by promoting the reuse of image data in the entire network.
Communication means for communicating with a device on a communication network, file sharing means for sharing a file with a device on the communication network by the communication means, and a page hash of a print job received by the communication means by the sharing means When the determination unit that determines whether or not the entry in the shared global management table matches, and the determination unit determines that the entry having the same hash value is included in the global management table, the image data associated with the hash value is An acquisition means for acquiring, a conversion means for converting print data into image data, a local data storage means for storing image data and various information, and a printing means for printing image data on a print medium Image processing device.
[Selection] Figure 1

Description

  The present invention relates to a printing system that performs print processing using image processing apparatuses distributed and arranged on a network.

Conventionally, printing processing by an image processing apparatus is performed by performing image processing called RIP (Raster Image Processing) in the image processing apparatus and printing the obtained image data on an output medium such as paper. Further, Patent Document 1 discloses that image data and a state are held in a hard disk drive, and image data is acquired from the hard disk depending on the state and printing is performed.
JP 2003-84934 A S. Sheppler, B. Callaghan, D. Robinson, R. Thurlow, C. Beame, M. Eisler, D. Noveck, April 2003, Internet <URL: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3530 .txt> R. Rivest, April 1992, Internet <URL: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1321.txt>

  In the above prior art, the image data generated in the image processing apparatus is held (cached) in a recording medium such as a hard disk, and the cached image data is used for the subsequent same print processing, so that the print processing time It was possible to shorten.

  However, in a network environment in which a plurality of image processing apparatuses are connected, the same data printing process is executed for a plurality of image processing apparatuses. The data reuse rate was not very high.

  Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to improve the printing throughput by promoting the reuse of the image data in the entire network, and to present only the hash value associated with the image data when holding the image data. It is to realize a printing system in which printing is performed in

  An image processing apparatus according to the present invention is generated by a file sharing unit that shares a file with an image processing apparatus on a network, a data conversion unit that converts print data included in a print request into image data, and a data conversion unit. Shared by the file sharing unit, the data storage unit for storing the image data, the table management unit for managing the hash value corresponding to the image data, the hash calculation unit for calculating the hash value of the print data, and the file sharing unit When it is determined that the hash value matches the hash value in the table by comparing the hash value in the table with the hash value obtained by the hash calculation unit by referring to the global management table, the hash value Image data acquisition means for acquiring image data associated with the And having a printing means for printing the image data generated by the acquisition or data converting means described.

  The print processing method of the present invention includes a determination step of comparing and determining a page hash value to be printed and a hash value on a global management table placed in a shared storage area shared by each image processing apparatus, and the determination step According to the determination result, whether to acquire image data on the shared storage area or to generate image data by image processing is determined, and the image data is printed.

  A program according to the present invention causes an image processing apparatus to execute the print processing method.

  The computer-readable recording medium of the present invention is characterized in that the program is recorded.

  According to the present invention, when a print request is made to an image processing apparatus from an information processing apparatus connected to a network, image data and a master management table held by each image processing apparatus via a shared storage area Can be read and written, and based on the hash value of each page of the original data, it is determined whether the image data corresponding to the page data is stored in any image processing apparatus. If the obtained image data is acquired and determined not to be stored, the page data is converted into image data and printed, so that the same original document is printed multiple times from different image processing apparatuses. In a general office environment, it shortens the time from issuing a print instruction to obtaining a print output. A.

In addition, the second effect of the present invention is to calculate a hash value for each page of print data in advance by the information processing apparatus, and send a print request including the hash value to the image processing apparatus.
When image data corresponding to all pages of print data is held by any image processing apparatus, a print job transferred from the information processing apparatus to the image processing apparatus includes only a minimum amount of print data. As a result, the transfer time is shortened, the printing time is further reduced, and the printer driver for converting the original data to PDL (Page Description Language) is not required in the information processing apparatus that transmits the print request. Even in a small device in which a printer driver such as a PDA (Personal Digital Assistance) or a mobile phone does not operate, it is possible to obtain a print output only by presenting only the hash value to be printed to the image processing apparatus.

  DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, preferred embodiments to which the invention is applied will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

<First Embodiment>
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of a communication network according to an embodiment of the present invention. The information processing apparatuses 101 and 105 and the image processing apparatuses 102, 103, and 104 are connected to a LAN (local area network) 106 such as Ethernet (registered trademark) and can directly communicate with each other.

  FIG. 2 is a diagram showing image data sharing by the image processing apparatuses 102, 103, and 104 in the communication network configuration of FIG. The image processing apparatuses 102, 103, and 104 include data storage units 202, 203, and 204, respectively. The print data in the image processing apparatuses 102, 103, and 104 can be referred to each other via the shared storage area 201.

  Here, the shared storage area is a storage area that can be referred to or operated from a plurality of devices, like the Network File System version 4 Protocol (NFSv4) shown in Non-Patent Document 1, and is the same as the data storage unit of its own device. However, it is needless to say that the present embodiment can be realized by any mechanism other than NFSv4 as long as the mechanism provides a similar function.

  A global storage table 211 and image data 212 are stored in the data storage unit 202 of the image processing apparatus 102, and the mapping (link) of the image data 212 is 222 in the shared storage area 201. Are arranged as 220 and can be referred to from other image processing apparatuses 103 and 104. For the link of the image data arranged in the shared storage area 201, a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) indicating the position information of the image data on the image processing apparatus is set as an internal format. Similarly, image data 213 stored in the data storage unit 203 of the image processing apparatus 103 is stored as image data 223 in the shared storage area 201, and image data 214 stored in the data storage unit 204 of the image processing apparatus 104 is stored in shared storage. In the area 201, the image data 224 can be referred to.

  In the communication network configuration of FIG. 1, the image processing apparatus 102 is called a master image processing apparatus, and is a global management table that maps the position information of all page data that can be referred to from the shared storage area 201 and the hash of the original data. 211 is held in the data holding unit 202.

  FIG. 3 is an internal configuration diagram of the image processing apparatuses 102, 103, and 104 in the communication network configuration of FIG. 1 for realizing the present invention. A communication interface 301 is connected to the LAN 106 in FIG. 1 and similarly communicates with a device connected to the LAN 106. Data received from the LAN 106 by the interface 301 is first temporarily stored in the reception buffer 302 and sent to the command analysis unit 305 under the arbitration of the device control unit 304 to analyze the contents. If the command analysis unit 305 analyzes that the received data is a print request called a print job, the print job is stored in a print queue that occupies a certain area in the data storage unit 306. The print queue is a FIFO (First In First Out) queue, and printing is generally performed in the order stored in the print queue. However, the print order can be changed by a job control command. The job control unit 308 monitors the print queue of the data storage unit 306. If print jobs are accumulated, the job control unit 308 inquires of the print control unit 310 to check whether print processing is possible. The print data included in the print job placed at the head of the print queue of the data storage unit 306 is transferred to the drawing processing unit 307. The drawing processing unit 307 performs various image processes and converts print data into a print image. The generated print image for one page is transferred to the page memory 309. Upon detecting that the print image is placed in the page memory 309, the print control unit 310 issues an instruction to the printer engine 311 to print the contents of the page memory 309 on the print medium. The print request is processed by repeating the image processing in the drawing processing unit 307, the development to the page memory 309, and the print processing by the printer engine 311 for all pages of the print data in the print job.

  FIG. 4 is a configuration example of the global management table 211 stored in the data storage unit 202 of the image processing apparatus 102 in FIG. The global management table includes a file name in the print image data shared storage area and a hash value of the original data of the print image data. In order to avoid collision when each image processing apparatus sets a link, the file name in the shared storage area is an at symbol (@) and its own image data file name stored in its own data storage unit. Set the character string that combines the IP addresses.

  Hereinafter, the print processing of the image processing apparatus 102 that has received a print request from the information processing apparatus 101 will be described with reference to the internal configuration diagram of the image processing apparatus in FIG. 3 and the flowchart in FIG. 5. Although the case where printing is performed by the image processing apparatus 102 will be described, printing can be realized by performing the same processing in the image processing apparatuses 103 and 104.

  When the job control unit 308 that processes the print job starts job processing, first, in step S501 in FIG. 5, a list of hash values corresponding to each page of the original data in the print job whose structure is shown in FIG. From 602, the hash value for the page being processed is acquired. In step S502, it is determined whether the acquired hash value matches the contents described in the hash value column for each entry in the global management table as shown in FIG.

  The hash value is obtained as an output of a one-way function such as MD5 shown in Non-Patent Document 2. One-way functions generate different outputs for different inputs, and have a characteristic that it is difficult to derive inputs from outputs. From this, the fact that the hash value (the output of the one-way function) is the same indicates that the print data (the input of the one-way function) is the same, so by associating the hash value of the print data with the image data The image data can be acquired from the hash value. In the present embodiment, MD5 is taken up as a one-way function, but it goes without saying that other one-way functions can be used.

  If the hash values match, it indicates that the image data corresponding to the print page is stored, so that the image data corresponding to the hash value is acquired and expanded in the page memory 309 in step S503. Since the mapping of the image data arranged on the shared storage area 201 describes the URL to the substance of the stored image data, the contents of the mapping of the image data are read and connected to the described URL. Thus, desired image data can be acquired. If the hash values do not match in step S502, the image data corresponding to the page is not stored, and in step S504, image data corresponding to the page is generated by the drawing processing unit 307 in FIG. The data is expanded in the memory 309. In step S505, the generated image data is stored in the data storage unit 306, and the hash value of the original data and the file name in the data storage unit 306 are paired and added to the local management table. In step S506, a link of the image data is arranged in the shared storage area 201, and an entry in which the file name of the image data and the hash value of the image data are paired is added to the global management table as shown in FIG. In step S507, the contents of the page memory 309 are printed on the print medium by the printer engine 311. In step S508, it is determined whether printing of all pages of print data has been completed. If there are remaining pages, the process returns to step S501 and the above-described processing is repeated. When printing of all pages is completed, the processing ends.

  As described above, according to the present embodiment, the hash value of the print job is compared with the hash value registered in the global management table placed in the shared storage area. In order to indicate that the corresponding image data is stored, the mapping of the corresponding image data is referred to, and the image data is acquired by accessing the URL indicated by the mapping. If the hash values do not match, the image data is not stored, so image processing is performed in the conventional drawing processing unit to generate image data and print. The generated image data is stored in the data storage unit, a link is generated on the shared storage area, and an entry associated with this link and hash is added to the global management table.

  In this way, the global management table in which the hash value for each page of the original data and the image data stored in the image processing apparatus are associated with each other and the link to the image data are arranged in the shared storage area, and can be referred / When writing is enabled to improve the printing speed using image data stored in multiple image processing devices on the network, and image data for all pages of the original data is stored The print job size can be reduced by attaching the hash value list without attaching the print data to the print job, thereby reducing the size of the print job and the print job from the information processing apparatus to the image processing apparatus. Since the transfer time is shortened, the time until the end of printing is further shortened.

<Second Embodiment>
In the first embodiment, the global management table 220 of the shared storage area 201 is centrally managed in the master image processing apparatus 102, but the image processing apparatus 102 cannot be processed due to power failure or failure. In some cases, the present invention could not be realized. Therefore, in the present embodiment, in FIG. 1, the global management tables 220 arranged in the shared storage area 201 managed by the master image processing apparatus 102 are periodically managed by the image processing apparatuses 103 and 104 other than the master, respectively. If the image processing apparatus 102 is not operating and the global management table 220 on the shared storage area 201 cannot be accessed, the global storage copied to the data storage unit 203 or 204 The present invention may be realized with reference to the management table.

  This embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. The flowchart in FIG. 7 is replaced with part of the processing in steps S502 and S503 in the flowchart in FIG. If the global management table can be referred to in step S701, the processes in and after step S502 in FIG. 5 are executed. If the global management table cannot be referred to, the global management as shown in FIG. With reference to the copy of the table, the IP address is extracted from the file name of the image data (described in the same line) corresponding to the hash value. The file name of the image data in the global management table is a combination of the local file name, the at sign (@), and the IP address of the image processing device that stores the image data. IP can be acquired by extracting. In step S703, the image data is acquired by using a file transfer means such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol) by connecting to the image processing apparatus indicated by the IP address. On the other hand, the image processing apparatus that has received the file transfer request determines whether or not the file requested to be transferred exists in step S711, and if it exists, transmits the file in step S712. In step S713, an error is transmitted.

As described above, according to the second embodiment of the present invention, it is impossible to connect to the master image processing apparatus that holds the global management table by periodically replicating the global management table in all the image processing apparatuses. Even in this case, by referring to the global management table copied to the data storage unit of its own device, it is possible to refer to the correspondence between the image data stored in another image processing device that implements the present invention and the hash value, and The present invention can be realized even when the shared storage area cannot be referred to due to a failure of the master image processing apparatus by acquiring the image data by printing with the image processing apparatus holding the data and performing printing. is there.

<Third Embodiment>
In the first and second embodiments, only the image processing apparatuses 102, 103, and 104 can refer to the shared storage area 201, but the information processing apparatus 101 or 105 that issues print processing also uses the shared storage area. 201 may be referred to.

  In the information processing apparatus 101 in FIG. 1, when original data such as a document is converted into PDL by a printer driver, a hash value for each page of the original data is calculated. Then, by referring to the global management table 220 of the shared storage area 201, it is determined whether or not the same hash value for each page is registered. If it is registered, image data is acquired. PDL generation is not performed. By performing the above processing on all pages of the original data, PDL is generated only for pages for which no hash value is registered and set as print data for the print job, and the hash value is also set for the print job. .

  As described above, according to the third embodiment of the present invention, even in the information processing apparatus that generates a print job, the global management table in the shared storage area can be referred to, and the original to be printed based on the hash value. It is determined whether or not image data corresponding to the data page is stored. If the image data is stored, the PDL of the page is not generated, so that the size of the PDL included in the print job is reduced. The time required for transferring the print job between the processing apparatus and the image processing apparatus is shortened, and the printing time is further increased.

  Another object of the present invention is to supply a storage medium storing software program codes for realizing the functions of the above-described embodiments to a system or apparatus, and the computer (or CPU or MPU) of the system or apparatus stores the storage medium. Needless to say, this can also be achieved by reading and executing the program code stored in.

  In this case, the program code itself read from the storage medium realizes the functions of the above-described embodiments, and the program code itself and the storage medium storing the program code constitute the present invention.

  As a storage medium for supplying the program code, for example, a flexible disk, a hard disk, an optical disk, a magneto-optical disk, a CD-ROM, a CD-R, a magnetic tape, a nonvolatile memory card, a ROM, or the like can be used.

  Further, by executing the program code read by the computer, not only the functions of the above-described embodiments are realized, but also an OS (basic system or operating system) running on the computer based on the instruction of the program code. Needless to say, a case where the functions of the above-described embodiment are realized by performing part or all of the actual processing and the processing is included.

  Further, after the program code read from the storage medium is written in a memory provided in a function expansion board inserted into the computer or a function expansion unit connected to the computer, the function is determined based on the instruction of the program code. It goes without saying that the CPU or the like provided in the expansion board or function expansion unit performs part or all of the actual processing and the functions of the above-described embodiments are realized by the processing.

It is a figure which shows the structure of the communication network which concerns on one Embodiment of this invention. It is the figure which showed the data sharing between image processing apparatuses among the communication networks of FIG. 2 is an internal module configuration example of an image processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention. It is a structural example of the management table managed with the master image processing apparatus which concerns on one Embodiment of this invention. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an operation of the image processing apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention. 4 is a structural example of a print job generated by the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention and processed by the image processing apparatus. 3 is a flowchart illustrating operations of an information processing apparatus and an image processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Explanation of symbols

101, 105 Information processing apparatus 102, 103, 104 Image processing apparatus 106 Network

Claims (9)

  A printing system connected to a communication network, the communication means for communicating with a device on the communication network, the file sharing means for sharing a file with the device on the communication network by the communication means, and the print job received by the communication means Determining whether the page hash matches an entry in the global management table shared by the sharing means, and determining that the global management table includes an entry having the same hash value by the determining means, the hash Acquisition means for acquiring image data associated with values, conversion means for converting print data into image data, local data storage means for storing image data and various information, and print means for printing image data on a print medium An image processing apparatus comprising: .   Image data saved by the shared data saving means by the shared data saving means for saving the image data generated by the converting means in the storage area shared by the sharing means, and the global management table shared by the sharing means. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: a table management unit that manages the information in association with each other.   Duplicating means for periodically copying the global management table shared by the file sharing means to its own device, checking means for checking whether the file sharing means can be used, and determining that the file sharing means cannot be used by the checking means And a switching means for switching a global management table used for determination of the hash value from the one shared by the sharing means to the one replicated by the duplicating means. An image processing apparatus according to 1.   A printing system connected to a communication network, communication means for communicating with devices on the communication network, hash calculation means for calculating a hash value for each page of original data such as a document to be printed, A conversion job that converts each page of the original data into a data format that can be processed by the image processing apparatus, a hash value calculated by the hash calculation unit, data converted by the conversion unit, and various print control data are generated. An information processing apparatus comprising: a generation unit; and a transmission unit that transmits a print job generated by the generation unit to an image processing apparatus by a communication unit.   Determine whether a file sharing unit that shares a file with an image processing apparatus on a communication network by a communication unit and an entry including a hash value calculated by the hash calculation unit is included in the global management table shared by the file sharing unit The information processing apparatus according to claim 4, further comprising a determination unit that performs determination.   If the determination unit determines that the entry having the hash value of the page calculated by the hash calculation unit is included in the global management table, the conversion unit does not convert the page and the conversion data is included in the print job. The information processing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the information processing apparatus is not configured.   A print processing method by an image processing apparatus, wherein a hash determination step for determining a hash value, an image data generation step for generating image data according to a determination result in the determination step, and stored image data are acquired. A data communication method comprising: an image data acquisition step; an image data storage step for storing the image data generated in the image data generation step in a shared storage area; and a printing step for printing the image data.   A program for causing a computer to execute the print processing method according to claim 7.   A computer-readable recording medium on which the program according to claim 8 is recorded.

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