DOCUMENT PROCESSING APPARATUS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To accurately and efficiently determine an association between an association source document and an association destination document. SOLUTION: An association source part extraction section 31 of an inter-document association extraction unit 3 selects from an inter-document association extraction rule storage section 23 inter-document association extraction rules (r) meeting a document type of an association source document d1 stored in an association source document storage section 21. The association source part extraction section 31 extracts a part meeting an association source part extraction condition of the rules R, as an association source part t1 from sentences of the association source document d1. In accordance with the rules (r), An association destination document retrieval condition generation section 32 generates an association destination document retrieval condition (q) from phrases included in the association source part t1. An association destination document retrieval section 33 retrieves, from association destination documents stored in the association destination document storage section 22, an association destination document d2, of which the type of the document meets an association destination document type determined in the rules (r), meeting the association destination document retrieval conditions (q) in the rules (r) and an association between the association source document d1 and the association destination document d2 is stored in an inter-document association storage section 24 of a storage device 2. COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT