1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a method of controlling printing, and more particularly, to a printing apparatus and a method of controlling printing which are advantageous, in particular, in handling a print job.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-202945 discloses a technique in which when a print job is handled (i.e., when the print job is controlled in terms of deleting, advancing of priority, interrupting, etc.), the handling is permitted or is not permitted in accordance with authority granted to a user for the print job of interest. Note that the term “handle” is used throughout the present description to express controlling a print job in terms of deleting, advancing of priority, interrupting, and the like. In this technique, an access ticket included in a print job input to a device via a network or a console is compared with an access ticket of a user who wants to handle the print job, and whether the handling of the print job is permitted or not is controlled according to a result of the comparison.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-36631 disclosed a technique to surely delete a print job. In this technique, if a request for deleting a print job is issued by an application at a stage where the print job has not yet produced by a print device, a printing system is set such that the printing device will delete the print job. In this case, when the print job is produced, the print device deletes the print job. This makes it possible to surely delete the print job.
In a conventional printing system, when a print job is transmitted to a print device via a network, and the print job is printed by the print device, there can be a problem in terms of preventing a leak of secret information, if an output material (a printed material) is left without being taken. In this respect, there is a need for a printing system that ensures that an output material is taken by a user who performs printing. One of such printing systems is that called a pull print system. In the pull print system, a client is only allowed to upload a print job, and issuing of a print command is performed on a print device. Thus, this technique is expected to be capable of suppressing the probability that an output material is left without being taken by a user.
However, when the printing operation is controlled in the pull print system according to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-202945, the following problems can occur. For example, when a command to delete a print job is issued, it is necessary to send the delete command via the same path as a path via which a print command was sent. However, in a large-scale server system, as in the case in a typical pull print system, the system includes a plurality of servers and is formed in a cluster configuration to distribute loads among the servers. In this configuration, it is difficult to send the command to delete a print job via the same path as the path of the print command.
In a case of conventional printing (push-printing), the same apparatus is used to produce a print job and handle the print job. Therefore, it is possible to immediately capture a print job and handle it. In contrast, in the pull print system, a print job is handled by a device different from a server that produces the print job. Therefore, it takes a long time to capture the print job, i.e., it takes a long time for the print job to reach the device. Therefore, a corresponding time is needed until the handling of the print job is reflected, and thus there is a possibility that the handling of deleting the print job is not reflected by a time by which the handling should be reflected.
Furthermore, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-202945, each time a handling operation is performed for a print job, checking is performed to determine whether an access ticket (authority information) embedded in the print job matches an access ticket (authority information) of a user. Therefore, in a case where authority is granted to a user in a complicated manner, for example, such that domain groups are defined, and deleting of a print job is permitted if the user is a member belonging to a particular domain group, it takes a long time to perform authentication, and thus it is necessary to wait for a long time until it is allowed to delete a print job or change the priority assigned to the print job.
Furthermore, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-36631, authorization as to authority to delete a print job is not considered as a technique to make it possible to surely delete a print job. Furthermore, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-36631, it is assumed that deleting is performed for a print job printed by a printing system. Therefore, in a case where a deleting is performed by a system different from a system used to perform printing, as is the case with the pull print system, the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-36631 cannot be applied.