INSTRUCTION SYSTEM, INSTRUCTION DEVICE, METHOD, AND PROGRAM

A matching result is promptly and accurately obtained using a small amount of data. An instruction device includes: an acquiring unit configured to acquire provided metadata, which is attribute information relating to one or more attributes of sensing data to be output from a sensor, the provided metadata having one or more hierarchy levels that contain information shared by a plurality of sensors; an acquiring unit configured to acquire usable metadata, which is attribute information relating to one or more attributes of an application that uses sensing data to provide a service; a matching unit configured to perform matching between the provided metadata and the usable metadata for each hierarchy level, calculate, for each hierarchy level, an inter-level matching degree that indicates a degree of matching in the hierarchy level, and extract a sensor capable of providing the sensing data that satisfies a request of the application, based on an overall matching degree, which is a sum of the inter-level matching degrees of all of the hierarchy levels; and an instruction unit configured to transmit a data flow control instruction that specifies the application that corresponds to the usable metadata and the extracted sensor based on the overall matching degree.