1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and a data conversion method. The present invention also relates to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a program for causing a computer to execute an information processing or a data conversion process.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, electronic data in a certain data format may be converted into electronic data in another data format, such as when a printer driver converts an office document into print data, for example. A data conversion process to convert the electronic data into a format that is suited for use at the time of outputting the electronic data is known from a Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-81081, for example.
In addition, the data conversion process is not limited to that performed in a single computer, and the data conversion process may be performed in a computer system that uses a plurality of computers, as proposed in a Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2009-75689, for example.
When making the conversion from one data format into another data format, a data conversion engine (or a data conversion program or a data conversion library) may be used in order to improve the independence or maintenance ease of the program.
However, the number of types of data conversion engines that are required to perform this conversion corresponds to the number of types of pairs formed by the number of types of input data formats and the number of types of output data formats. For example, when there are three (3) types of data format candidates for the data format before the conversion and there are three (3) types of data format candidates for the data format after the conversion, nine (9) types of data conversion engines are required in accordance with the number of types of pairs formed by the number of types of input data formats and the number of types of output data formats. In other words, the larger the number of options for the data formats before or after the conversion, the larger the number of types of data conversion engines that need to be prepared.
Hence, as the number of options for the data formats before or after the conversion increases, the number of types of data conversion engines that need to be prepared increases. As a result, when the number of options for the data formats before or after the conversion is relatively large, it may be difficult to flexibly cope with the increase in the number of types of data conversion engines that need to be prepared.