Data-flow control device and data-flow control method

A data-flow control method, comprising:

• acquiring device-side metadata indicating specifications of data that can be provided by a device for each of a plurality of devices;
• acquiring application-side metadata indicating a specification of data requested by an application that uses the data provided by the device;
• storing the device-side metadata and the application-side metadata;
• extracting a combination of the application-side metadata corresponding to the application and the device-side metadata corresponding to the device that can provide the data satisfying the specification requested by the application by performing matching of the application-side metadata and the device-side metadata;
• and
• generating a data-flow control command specifying the device and application extracted in the matching,
• wherein
• the device-side metadata or the application-side metadata includes permission information that is information indicating whether to permit a combination with a plurality of pieces of other party metadata,
• the matching includes determining whether to generate a combination with a single piece of other party metadata or a combination with a plurality of pieces of other party metadata based on the permission information included in the device-side metadata or the application-side metadata, and
• all of the steps are performed by a computer.

A non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program configured to cause a computer to perform operations comprising:

• acquiring device-side metadata indicating specifications of data that can be provided by a device for each of a plurality of devices;
• acquiring application-side metadata indicating a specification of data requested by an application that uses the data provided by the device;
• storing the device-side metadata and the application-side metadata;
• extracting a combination of the application-side metadata corresponding to the application and the device-side metadata corresponding to the device that can provide the data satisfying the specification requested by the application by performing matching of the application-side metadata and the device-side metadata;
• and
• generating a data-flow control command specifying the device and application extracted in the matching,
• wherein
• the device-side metadata or the application-side metadata includes permission information that is information indicating whether to permit a combination with a plurality of pieces of other party metadata, and
• the matching includes determining whether to generate a combination with a single piece of other party metadata or a combination with a plurality of pieces of other party metadata based on the permission information included in the device-side metadata or the application-side metadata.