Information providing method which enables data communication costs to be reduced, and information providing system for implementing the method

DETAILED DESCRIPTION It is an objective of the present invention to overcome the problems of the prior art set out hereinabove, by providing an information providing method and an information providing system for implementing the method, whereby the communication costs and complexity of processing which are associated with the dispatching of information to users can be reduced, and whereby information can be supplied to users with communication costs which are matched to the services provide.
To achieve the above objectives, an information providing method and information providing system according to the present invention have the following basic features.
An information providing apparatus processes original information which serves as a data base, and which is updated at regular or irregular intervals, to separate the original information into first data which are substantially fixed, i.
e.
, which are known to change only relatively infrequently or which undergo only relatively small amounts of variation when changes occur due to updating, and second data consisting of data which are known to change relatively frequently or which undergo relatively large amounts of variation when changes occur due to updating.
When the first data and second data have first been respectively generated, the information providing apparatus stores these as respectively separate data categories, and transmits them to each information receiving apparatus of respective users to be stored therein.
Thereafter (until an updated set of the first data is again generated) the information providing apparatus updates the contents of the second data which are stored at the information providing apparatus, each time that a new set of original information is acquired.
Specifically, the information providing apparatus compares any newly acquired original information with the stored first data, to thereby obtain (as updated second data) any data which are contained in the new original information but not in the stored first data