ALERTING USER-PROCESSING SITES AS TO THE AVAILABILITY OF INFORMATION

摘要

Data files (251) are received by a central processing system (104) and these files analysed to determine whether they contain information which is relevant to user-specified characteristics. On detecting such a condition, an alert signal is supplied to the respective user (115). The incoming data files are analysed with respect to common data characteristics (252) to generate common category associations (253). The data files are then processed with respect to user-specific data characteristics (256). The user-specific data characteristics include examples of the common data characteristics (260) and the specific processing procedures make use of the previously defined common category associations.