Instruction system, instruction device, method, and program

An instruction system comprising:

• a hierarchization device;
• and an instruction device,
• wherein the hierarchization device is configured to acquire metadata, which is attribute information relating to one or more attributes of sensing data to be output from a sensor, from a plurality of sensors, classify the acquired metadata into pieces of metadata that contain information shared by the plurality of sensors, and hierarchize the metadata acquired from the plurality of sensors such that each of the pieces of metadata corresponds to any of the one or more hierarchy levels, and the lower the hierarchy level is, the smaller the number of sensors to which the metadata corresponds is, and
• the instruction device includes:
• a provided data 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;
• a provided data storage unit configured to store the provided metadata;
• a usable data 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 usable data storage unit configured to store the usable metadata;
• 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;
• a matching result storage unit configured to store the overall matching degree;
• 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, to a managing device, which manages control of transmitting data of a predetermined sensor to a predetermined application.

An instruction method comprising the steps of:

• acquiring 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;
• acquiring usable metadata, which is attribute information relating to one or more attributes of an application that uses sensing data to provide a service;
• performing matching between the provided metadata obtained from a provided metadata storage unit in which the provided metadata is stored and the usable metadata obtained from a usable metadata storage unit in which the usable metadata is stored for each hierarchy level, calculating, for each hierarchy level, an inter-level matching degree that indicates a degree of matching in the hierarchy level, and extracting 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
• transmitting 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 obtained from a matching result storage unit in which the overall matching degree is stored, to a managing device, which manages control of transmitting data of a predetermined sensor to a predetermined application.