Client-side pricing agent for collecting and managing product price information over the internet

• US 20050177785A1
• Filed: 07/22/2003
• Published: 08/11/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/25/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Theodore Jack London Shrader, Umesh Gopaldas Khatwani
• Original Assignee: Theodore Jack London Shrader, Umesh Gopaldas Khatwani
• Inventors: Shrader, Theodore Jack London, Khatwani, Umesh Gopaldas
• Application Number:
  US10/624,269
• Publication Number:
  US 20050177785A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/230
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions

Abstract

A method of collecting product data, e.g., from a plurality of web sites on the Internet. The method is operative from a client computer and utilizes a pricing agent. Using the agent, a user can generate a set of product profiles each identifying a given site URL, a list of one or more included items to be queried, a scan interval, and a site template. For a given product profile, the agent periodically retrieves data from the given site URL at the scan interval. It then parses the data retrieved according to the site template to generate a data record for each included item comprising an item name, an associated price value and, optionally, a secondary source. The retrieved data may also be compared against one or more threshold expressions to generate given actions.

Claims

1-16. -16. (canceled)

17. A database for use in managing a pricing agent in a computer, comprising:

a pricing profile table comprising a set of profile records, each record identifying a URL site, a list of included items, a scan interval, and a pointer to a site template;

a site template table comprising a set of site templates, each site template comprising lexical instructions for parsing a data stream to identify given data; and

a price table comprising a set of pricing records, each record identifying an item name, an associated price value, and at least one source.

18. The database of claim 17 further including a threshold table comprising a set of threshold records, each record identifying a threshold type, a threshold value, and a threshold comparison operator.

19. The database of claim 17 wherein each profile record further includes a list of excluded items.

21. The database of claim 18, wherein price data for an item name is collected over a given period of time to produce historical data.

22. The database of claim 17, wherein the database receives queries from a pricing agent.

23. The database of claim 22, wherein the pricing agent provides data to the database using the set of profile records.

24. The database of claim 17, wherein the pricing table provides an identification of URL sites to be scanned for data.

25. The database of claim 18, wherein the threshold table indicates when a threshold condition is reached to trigger a threshold event

26. The database of claim 25, wherein threshold event is a sending of an email.

27. The database of claim 25, wherein the site templates include matching criteria.

28. The database of claim 25, wherein each site template includes a scanning template that indicates who to scan for item names and corresponding prices.

20. A computer, comprising:

a browser;

a database comprising;

a pricing profile table comprising a set of profile records, each record identifying a URL site, a list of included items, a scan interval, and a pointer to a site template;

a site template table comprising a set of site templates, each site template comprising lexical instructions for parsing a data stream to identify given data; and

a price table comprising a set of pricing records, each record identifying an item name, and associated price value, and at least one source; and

code executable in the browser during processing of a given pricing profile record at the scan interval for parsing data retrieved form the URL site according to the site template to generate a data record for each included item.