WO2007112632A1 - Presentation method and apparatus of electric bill - Google Patents

Abstract

A presentation method of an electric bill includes: extracting a bill data; constructing the extracted bill data as a data structure model having a hierarchy relation; outputting a data in the data structure model in a specific format according to the prescription of a XSL style file and a user parameter. A presentation apparatus of an electric bill is also disclosed. According to the prescription of the XSL style file and the user parameter, the data in the XML DOM may be output in a specific format, since the XSL style file contains various style templates, and the user parameter can also contains various customized or specialized style setting, the diversification of the presentation style of the electric bill can be realized.

Description

 Electronic bill display method and device

 The present application claims priority to Chinese Patent Application No. 20061007203, filed on Apr. 4, 2006, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. .

Technical equipment

 The present invention relates to electronic billing technology, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for displaying an electronic bill.

Background technique

 The booming telecommunications business has led to the emergence of electronic billing services. Currently, there are two ways to present an electronic bill:

 The first method is to solidify the bill of the operation support system (BOSS, Business Operation Support System) into an electronic document PDF format. The implementation process of this method is as shown in FIG. 1, and includes: Step S101: BOSS takes the user from the database. Data such as consumption and transactions are exported, and files in a specific format are generated, wherein the format must conform to the requirements of subsequent printing software;

 Step S102: determining whether it is required to print the file of the specific format, if yes, go to step S103, otherwise, go to step S104;

 Step S103: printing the file of the specific format by the printing software; a piece, usually a PDF format, and proceeding to step S105;

 Step S105: Import the PDF format file into the E-Bill (electronic billing) system of the operator, and go to step S106;

 Step S106: The PDF file is presented by the E-Bill system.

 In the above method, BOSS exports the user's consumption and transaction data from the database, and then undergoes a series of format conversions. When the user needs to check the bill, the BOS prints the bill to the operator's business hall or logs in to the operator's website. View the bill in PDF format so that users can get clear results.

 However, since the data of the user's consumption and transactions needs to be generated in a specific format, the billing style presented to the user will be single, which makes it difficult to meet the requirements of internationalization or personalization.

The second method: directly obtains user information, user consumption information, transaction information and other data from multiple tables of the database, and directly writes the data according to the presentation requirements in the need to display HTML (HyperText Markup Language) page to display to the user. In the above method, since the data is written on the HTML page, the portability is poor, and the presentation style is relatively simple, so this method is also difficult to meet the requirements of internationalization or personalization.

 Therefore, the bills presented by the current method of displaying electronic bills have the problem of exhibiting a single style and failing to meet the individual needs.

Summary of the invention

 The embodiment of the invention provides a method and a device for displaying an electronic bill, and realizes diversification of the presentation style of the electronic bill.

 The embodiment of the invention further provides a method for displaying an electronic bill, comprising: extracting bill data; constructing the extracted bill data into a data structure model having a hierarchical relationship; according to XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) The specification of the style file and the user parameter outputs the data in the data structure model in a specified format.

 The embodiment of the present invention further provides an electronic bill presentation apparatus, including: a billing data extracting unit, configured to extract billing data; and a data structure model constructing unit, configured to construct the extracted billing data into a hierarchical relationship a data structure model; a data output unit, configured to output data in the data structure model in a specified format according to an XSL style file and a user parameter.

 In the embodiment of the present invention, the data in the XML DOM may be output in a specified format according to the XSL style file and the user parameter. Since the XSL style file includes multiple style templates, the user parameter may also include multiple personalized or The special style setting, therefore, the embodiment of the invention can realize the diversification of the presentation style of the electronic bill.

DRAWINGS

 1 is a flow chart of a current method for displaying an electronic bill;

 2 is a flow chart of a first embodiment of a method of the present invention;

 3 is a schematic diagram of a DOM according to an embodiment of the present invention;

 4 is a screenshot of a protocol defined by using XML Schema according to an embodiment of the present invention;

 Figure 5 is a flow chart of a second embodiment of the method of the present invention.

detailed description

 Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

First, a first embodiment of the method of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. As shown in Figure 2, -3 - The method embodiments include:

 Step S201: Batchly extract billing data from the billing database, and generate the extracted billing data into an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file.

 Bulking out billing data means extracting multiple billing data from the billing database each time. The billing data refers to the data constituting the bill. For example, it may be data related to the user, data that may be required by the predicted user, or data actually needed by the user. The amount of extracted data can be determined according to actual needs. For example, all data related to the user or the user needs can be extracted at one time, or only part of the data related to the user or required by the user can be extracted at a time until it is related to the user or the user. All the data needed is extracted. In addition, the billing data can be taken before the user queries the bill.

 After extracting the data, you need to generate the XML file with a certain hierarchical relationship. Hierarchical relationship refers to the affiliation between each data. For example, the bill can contain attributes and information. The information can include operator logo, expense information, customer information, and payment rules. The fee information can include the previous period balance, the current new fee, and Summarize the remainder. XML is a fine-tuned Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) that combines the rich functionality of SGML with the ease of use of HTML into Web applications. XML preserves the extensibility of SGML, which makes XML fundamentally different from HTML. XML has more features than HTML. Instead of using fixed tags, it allows an unlimited number of tags to be used to describe the material in a document, while allowing for nested information structures. HTML is just a general way of displaying web data, and XML provides a common way to work directly with web data. HTML focuses on the display format of Web pages, while XML focuses on the content of Web pages.

 Step S202: Parse the XML file to obtain an XML DOM (Document Object Model).

The DOM obtained by parsing the XML file can be a tree structure or other structure with nested relationships. When you need to call some or some data in the DOM, you can quickly find the required data according to the hierarchical relationship in the DOM. . Taking the DOM diagram provided by the embodiment of the present invention shown in FIG. 3 as an example, if it is necessary to call the summary time, the summary balance can be found through billing, information, and cost information. In addition, if the previous balance is called after the sum of the sum is called, the previous balance can be found again through the bill, information, and expense information. In addition, the last call can be directly used. The process, for example, finds the previous balance directly from the expense information.

 Step S203: The XML converter outputs the data in the XML DOM in a specified format according to the specification of the XSL style file and the user parameter.

 The XSL style file and user parameters can collectively specify the style, style, etc. of the print or presentation, and the XML converter outputs the data in the DOM in the required format as specified.

 XSL is used to translate data in XML files into HTML or other formatted languages. XSL provides a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) feature that allows developers to construct Web pages with an expression layer structure that are distinct from XML data structures. XSL can also construct stacked pages with HTML. XSL can interpret an unlimited number of tags to make web pages more colorful, such as dynamic text. In addition, XSL can handle multi-national characters, double-byte Chinese characters, and grids.

 The XSL style file may contain an internationalization language pack, which is composed of localized files of a plurality of countries or regions, and the localization file sets the expression of the content on the bill in the local language habits, Settings such as currency symbol, time, label language, person name, etc. On February 20, 2006, for example, the Chinese display format is generally "February 20, 2006". If this date is displayed in English, the format displayed is generally "February 20th, 2006". The international language pack has multiple language setting standards, so it can solve the internationalization problem of billing language, and then enable the electronic bill to adapt to the needs of different countries and regions. The following describes the international language pack by way of example.

 Define the language package entry file lang.xml, the content is as follows:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

 <!DOCTYPE billlangmap [

 <!ENTITY ar SYSTEM "ar.xml">

 <!ENTITY en SYSTEM "en.xml">

 <!ENTITY ml SYSTEM "ml.xmr>

 <!ENTITY zh_cn SYSTEM "zh-cn.jiml">

 <!ENTITY zh— tw SYSTEM "zh_tw.xml">]>

 <billlangmap>

&ar; &en;

 &ml;

 &zh-cn;

 &zh- tw;

 </billlangmap>

 The above ar, en, ml, zh cn, zh tw In addition, J is A white ^ 1, English, Ma ^ l, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and have different language files corresponding to them. Take the example of TotalBalance in Figure 3, assuming TotalBalance is $12.50, if you want to display 10^18&^1106>12.50 101^18&131^6> as Chinese cylinder (zh_cn) and English (en) For bilingual content, you can use TotalBalance to find the corresponding Chinese Simplified and English corresponding content in the language package. The results found are "current balance" and "Total Balance", and the final display is: "The current balance Total Balance" $12.50" (assuming the local currency symbol is $, the display format of the fee is also configurable).

 An XSL style file can contain a set of parameter definitions that set criteria for setting multiple parameters. Define some parameters, which can be convenient for users to set some personalized content, such as the language of bill display, the order of bill display (sorted by call time or call type), the order of text layout (from left to right or from right to right) Left typesetting), browser parameters (if the user is browsing the bill on the phone, the bill should be simple and meet the browser's special requirements). The parameter definition set is explained below by way of example.

 Parameter file param.xsl:

 <xsl:stylesheet>

 <xsl:param name="bill.langl" select="'en"7>

 <xsl:param name="bilUang2" select=" 'zh_cn"'/>

 <xsl:param name="bill.lang3" select=" 'zh_tw"'/>

 </xsl:stylesheet>

Here <xsl:param name- 'bill.langl"select=",en'> defines ¹ Hi single language parameter, if the user does not set this parameter, the billing language defaults to English. If a mobile phone user requests to display Chinese simplified and English bills, you can choose to display bilUangl and bill.lang2 to The bill is presented in simplified Chinese and English.

 The XSL style file may include a general presentation template for presenting information in a general style, and the universal presentation template may be used to define some modular information, such as a client address (address), a standard address on the address ( Street No ), House, Block, Floor, Zip (zip) and other information have some common display methods, so you can make a separate template to deal with.

 The XSL style file can also contain special presentation templates for presenting information in a special style, and special presentation templates for defining special templates to handle the special needs of different operators and customs.

 The user parameter may be a requirement of the user's statement presentation style. For example, the display language of the bill is required to be Chinese, and the background of the bill is required to be a layout with a Chinese traditional style.

 In the first embodiment of the method of the present invention, an interface protocol may also be preset, and the interface protocol may specify the membership relationship of the billing data. The interface protocol may be a document type definition, and the language defining the interface protocol may be an XML Schema (XML Schema Language) or a DTD (Document Type Definitions). A document type definition is a protocol-like file that can be used to guide business module developers and presentation module developers to develop modules. For example, business module developers can use it to check whether a developed program can generate a conforming conformance ( Well-formed ) XML billing, presentation module developers can use it and some integrated development tools (such as Altova StyleVision) to easily design XSL style files, where good structure means well-formed, that is, XML files must conform to form , the requirements of the grammar specification.

 In the first embodiment of the method of the present invention, the bill data extracted in step S201 may be generated into an XML file conforming to the interface protocol standard, and may also be designed according to the affiliation relationship between the data specified by the interface protocol and the user's requirements. XSL style file.

The above interface protocol is defined, which essentially defines the interface between the business module developer and the presentation module developer. If the interface protocol specifies the affiliation between the data, the business module developer defines what data is extracted from the billing database when designing the business module, and arranges the relationship between the data according to the interface protocol. When designing XSL style files, developers also design styles based on interface protocols and set the appropriate parameters. Figure 4 is a screenshot of the protocol defined using XML Schema, which specifies the data in the bill, also known as the element, and also specifies the membership and order relationship between the elements, for example, the root element is bill (billing) , under the root element, there are billing attributes and unnamed elements. Unnamed elements also have ComanyLogo (operator's logo), billfee (cost information), custinfo (customer information), and paymentrule (paid rules). . In this case, when designing the business module, the business module developer needs to define the action of looking for elements such as billfee from the database, and also according to the screenshot shown in Figure 4, which element the elements such as billfee should belong to. When the module developer designs the XSL style file, according to the element relationship defined by the screenshot, the design style is displayed. For example, where ComanyLogo, custinfo, etc. are set on the page, if you need to find billfee, you need to find the unnamed under the bill. Element, then find billfee under the unnamed element.

 Next, a second embodiment of the method of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.

 Step S501: Extract billing data in real time from the billing database. Extracting billing data in real time means extracting data when the user queries the bill, and the extracted data may be data corresponding to the information that the user needs to query.

 Step S502: Construct the extracted billing data as an XML DOM. Since the billing data is extracted in real time and needs to be directly output, after extracting the data, the data needs to directly generate the DOM with the nested relationship, and the purpose of generating the DOM is to facilitate the presentation platform calling data with the presentation function.

 Step S503: The XML converter outputs the data in the XML DOM in a specified format according to the specification of the XSL style file and the user parameter.

 In the second embodiment of the method of the present invention, an interface protocol may also be preset, and the interface protocol may specify the membership relationship of the bill data. The interface protocol may be a document type definition, and the language defining the interface protocol may be an XML Schema or a DTD. A document type definition is a protocol-like file that can be used to guide business module developers and presentation module developers to develop modules. For example, business module developers can use it to check whether a developed program can generate a well-formed protocol. XML billing, presentation module developers can use it and some integrated development tools (such as Altova StyleVision) to easily design XSL style files, where well-formed means well-formed, that is, XML files must meet the requirements of formal qualifications and grammar specifications. .

In the second embodiment of the method of the present invention, the bill data extracted in step S501 can be generated. The XML DOM conforming to the interface protocol standard may also design an XSL style file according to the affiliation relationship between the data specified by the interface protocol and the needs of the user.

 The above interface protocol is defined, which essentially defines the interface between the business module developer and the presentation module developer. If the interface protocol specifies the affiliation between the data, the business module developer defines what data is extracted from the billing database when designing the business module, and arranges the relationship between the data according to the interface protocol. When designing XSL style files, developers should also design presentation styles according to the interface protocol and set the appropriate parameters.

 The XSL style file may contain an internationalization language pack, which is composed of localized files of a plurality of countries or regions, and the localization file sets the expression of the content on the bill in the local language habits, Settings such as currency symbol, time, label language, person name, etc.

 An XSL style file can contain a set of parameter definitions that set criteria for setting multiple parameters.

 The XSL style file may contain a generic presentation template for presenting information in a generic style.

 The XSL style file can also contain special presentation templates that are used to present information in a particular style.

 In addition, the solution of the first embodiment of the method of the present invention and the solution of the second embodiment of the method of the present invention may also be combined. For example, two processes of extracting data may be used in parallel, and the process of defining an interface protocol and displaying data may be completely The first embodiment of the method of the invention or the second embodiment of the method of the invention is the same. For example, if you query the bill for a month or a few months before, you can export the data in batches before the query. When you need to query, you can get it from the XML file. If you query this month's bill, you can get the data directly from the database. .

In an existing method for displaying an electronic bill, in order to present an electronic bill to a user, it is necessary to directly obtain data such as user information, user consumption information, and transaction information from a plurality of tables of the database, and then use the data according to the data. The presentation requirements are written directly on the HTML page that needs to be presented. However, because there are a large number of business associations between the tables in the database, if the original data is directly displayed in HTML format, it is not conducive to the separation of business and presentation, so that developers not only need to pay attention to the operator's business knowledge, but also Focus on how to clearly display the billing data through HTML. If you don't understand the business, there is no way to get the right data. If you don't understand the presentation, you can't get the data correctly. One ~ .

The display is shown, which increases the business and skill requirements for developers.

 In the embodiment of the present invention, an interface protocol that defines the membership relationship of the billing data is defined. The interface protocol is equivalent to a communication bridge between the business module developer and the presentation module developer, and the interface protocol defines the data. The standard of data relationship, so the business module developer only needs to consider the problem at the business level, and the module developer only needs to consider the problem of the presentation level. The two types of developers use this interface protocol to complete the development of the electronic bill, and effectively realize the business. The separation of modules and presentation modules reduces the amount of work required for program development and maintenance.

 The embodiment of the present invention further provides an electronic bill presentation apparatus, including: a billing data extracting unit, configured to extract billing data; and a data structure model constructing unit, configured to construct the extracted billing data into a hierarchical relationship a data structure model; a data output unit, configured to output data in the data structure model in a specified format according to an XSL style file and a user parameter.

 The billing data extracting unit may extract billing data as follows: Before the user inquires the bill, the billing data is extracted in batches, or when the user inquires the bill, the billing data is extracted in real time.

 The data structure model construction unit further includes: an XML file generating unit configured to generate the extracted bill data into an XML file; and an XML file parsing unit configured to parse the XML file to obtain a data structure model.

 The data structure model may be an extensible markup language XML document object model DOM, and the data structure model may be a tree structure model or a structure model having a nested relationship.

 The electronic bill presentation apparatus may further include: an interface protocol setting unit configured to set an interface protocol specifying the membership of the bill data before outputting the data in the data structure model in a specified format.

 The interface protocol may be defined for an ML document type, and the language defining the interface protocol may adopt an XML schema language XML Schema or a document type definition language DTD.

 If the interface protocol is set, the data structure model may be a data structure model conforming to the interface protocol standard, and the XSL style file may be an XSL designed according to the affiliation of the data specified by the interface protocol and the user's requirements. Style file.

 The XSL style file can include:

An internationalization language package, the internationalization language package being composed of localization files of a plurality of countries or regions, the localization file setting a manifestation of the content on the bill in the local language habit; and / or

 a parameter definition set, the parameter definition set specifying a setting criterion of a plurality of parameters; and/or a general presentation template for presenting information in a general style; and/or a special presentation template, wherein the special presentation template is Show information in a special style.

 Additionally, the user parameters may specify the format in which the bill is presented.

 The data output unit can be an XML converter.

 In the embodiment of the present invention, the data in the XML DOM may be output in a specified format according to the XSL style file and the user parameter. Since the XSL style file includes multiple style templates, the user parameter may also include multiple personalized or The special style setting, therefore, the embodiment of the invention can realize the diversification of the presentation style of the electronic bill.

 The above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and it should be noted that those skilled in the art can also make several improvements and retouchings without departing from the principles of the present invention. It is considered as the scope of protection of the present invention.

Claims

Rights request  A method for presenting an electronic bill, comprising:  Extract billing data;  Constructing the extracted billing data into a data structure model having a hierarchical relationship;  The data in the data structure model is output in a specified format according to the specification of the extensible style language XSL style file and user parameters.  The method of presenting an electronic bill according to claim 1, wherein the billing data is extracted by: extracting billing data in batches before the user queries the bill.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 2, wherein the extracted bill data is constructed as a data structure model according to the following steps:  Generating the extracted billing data into an Extensible Markup Language XML file;  Parse the XML file to obtain a data structure model.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 1, wherein the billing data is extracted in such a manner that: when the user queries the bill, the bill data is extracted in real time.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 1, wherein: the data structure model is an extensible markup language XML document object model DOM.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 1, wherein the data structure model is a tree structure model or a structure model having a nested relationship.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 1, wherein: the data structure model conforms to a preset interface protocol standard, and the interface protocol standard specifies a membership relationship of billing data.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 7, wherein: the interface protocol is defined as an XML document type, and the language defining the interface protocol is an XML schema language XML Schema or a document type definition language DTD.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 7, wherein: the XSL style file is an XSL style file designed according to a membership relationship of data specified by the interface protocol and a user's requirement. 10. The method of displaying an electronic bill according to claim 1, wherein said XSL style file comprises: An internationalized language pack, the internationalized language pack being composed of localized files of a plurality of countries or regions, the localized file setting a manifestation of the content on the bill in local language habits; and/or  a parameter definition set, the parameter definition set specifying a setting criterion of a plurality of parameters; and/or a general presentation template for presenting information in a general style; and/or a special presentation template, wherein the special presentation template is Show information in a special style.  The electronic bill presentation method according to claim 1, wherein: said user parameter specifies a format in which the bill is presented.  12. An electronic bill presentation apparatus, comprising:  a billing data extracting unit, configured to extract billing data;  a data structure model construction unit, configured to construct the extracted bill data into a data structure model having a hierarchical relationship;  a data output unit, configured to output data in the data structure model in a specified format according to an XSL style file and a user parameter.  The electronic bill presentation apparatus according to claim 12, wherein the data structure model construction unit further comprises:  An XML file generating unit, configured to generate the extracted billing data into an XML file;  An XML file parsing unit is configured to parse the XML file to obtain a data structure model. The electronic bill presentation apparatus according to claim 12, further comprising: an interface protocol setting unit, configured to set prescribed bill data before outputting the data in the data structure model in a specified format The affiliation of the interface protocol.  The electronic bill presentation apparatus according to claim 12, wherein: said data output unit is an XML converter.