Maintaining synchronization of information published to multiple subscribers

• US 7,519,546 B2
• Filed: 04/30/2001
• Issued: 04/14/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Murren, Brian T., Hathaway, Barry
• Primary Examiner(s): Elisca; Pierre E
• Application Number:
  US09/847,035
• Publication Number:
  US 20030110085A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,906 Days
• Field of Search: 705/26, 705/27, 705/37
• US Class Current: 705/26.61
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation

Abstract

Information describing one or more items is published to multiple subscribers. A subsequent change to the information requested by one of the multiple subscribers (such as a change in the status of an item corresponding to the information) is communicated to each of subscribers to which the information was previously published.

Claims

1. A system having one or more computing devices, comprising:

an information tracking component configured to store, for each of a plurality of items, wherein each item is an asset available for purchase, information describing the item;

a supply component configured to receive data describing the plurality of items and store the data as the information in the information tracking component;

a publishing component configured to select, based on pre-established selection criteria, for each of a plurality of subscribers, a set of information from the information tracking component, and to communicate the selected set of information to local storage maintained by the subscriber, wherein the publishing component is configured to perform the communication by transferring the information to subscribers in advance of receiving requests from the subscribers to modify the information; and

a subscriber request component configured to receive requests from the plurality of subscribers and modify the information stored in the information tracking component in accordance with the requests, wherein the subscriber request component is configured to receive a request to reserve a particular asset,

wherein the publishing component is further configured to identify one or more of the plurality of subscribers affected by the modification to the information stored in the information tracking component, and to communicate, to the one or more of the plurality of subscribers affected by the modification, the information as modified, and to communicate to selected ones of the plurality of subscribers a notification that the asset is reserved and not available for sale.

2. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the information tracking component is to store information regarding a plurality of assets.

3. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the information tracking component is to store information regarding a plurality of services.

4. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the information tracking component includes an information tracking database and a publishing database, wherein the information tracking database is configured to stores data describing the plurality of items, and wherein the publishing database stores data identifying which of the plurality of subscribers each of the plurality of items has been published to.

5. A system as recited in claim 4, wherein the publishing database is configured to identify the plurality of subscribers that each of the plurality of items has been published to based on the data in the publishing database.

6. A system as recited in claim 4, wherein the publishing database includes a status field used to identify the current respective status of the plurality of items.

7. A system as recited in claim 6, wherein the status field identifies the status of the plurality of items with respect to each of the subscribers that subscribe to the items.

8. A system as recited in claim 6, wherein the status has at least one of the states of:

an active status indicating that an item is available for purchase;

an inactive status indicating that the item is no longer available for purchase;

deferred status indicating that the item will become available in the future;

a sale pending status indicating that there is a sale pending for the item;

a sold status indicating that the item has been sold;

or

a reserved status indicating that the item has been reserved for potential sale.

9. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the publishing component is further to perform the selection for each subscriber based at least in part on criteria supplied by the subscriber, which defines the pre-established selection criteria.

10. A system as recited in claim 9, wherein the information tracking component is configured to identify each item using a plurality of fields, and wherein the criteria supplied by the subscriber is defined with reference to the fields.

11. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the publishing component is further configured to perform the selection for each subscriber based at least in part on the information in the information tracking component describing each of the plurality of items.

12. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more of the plurality of subscribers affected by the modification to the information stored in the information tracking component comprise the ones of the plurality of subscribers to which the information was previously communicated.

13. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the selected ones of the plurality of subscribers comprise only subscribers that received, as part of the set of information, information describing the particular asset.

14. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the publishing component is further configured to communicate to one of the subscribers to delete information previously communicated to the one subscriber.

15. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the publishing component is further configured to automatically communicate, to one of the subscribers, information in addition to the set of information previously communicated to the one subscriber.

16. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the publishing component is further configured to communicate, to the plurality of subscribers, modifications to the set of information communicated to each subscriber.

17. A system as recited in claim 16, wherein the modifications include additional information describing additional items.

18. A system as recited in claim 16, wherein the modifications include deletions of information from the set of information.

19. A system as recited in claim 16, wherein the modifications include updates to the information in the set of information.

20. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein each item has an associated time indicating when it is available, and wherein the publishing component is further configured to communicate, as part of the set of information, only information corresponding to items for which the associated times indicate are currently available.

21. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the subscriber request component is further configured to modify the information stored in the information tracking component in response to a request from a particular subscriber only if an appropriate fee is paid by the particular subscriber.

22. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the supply component is configured to receive the data describing the one or more items in a plurality of different formats, and to convert the data into the format used by the information tracking component.

23. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein the subscriber request component is configured to receive requests from the plurality of subscribers in a plurality of different formats, and to convert the requests into a defined format.

24. A system having one or more computing devices, comprising:

an information tracking component configured to store, for each of a plurality of items, information describing the item;

a supply component configured to receive data describing the plurality of items and store the data as the information in the information tracking component and is configured to receive information having a data portion and an operation portion, wherein the data portion includes data received from a source, and the operation portion identifies an operation to be performed by the supply component;

a publishing component configured to select, based on pre-established selection criteria, for each of a plurality of subscribers, a set of information from the information tracking component, and to communicate the selected set of information to local storage maintained by the subscriber, wherein the publishing component is configured to perform the communication by transferring the information to subscribers in advance of receiving requests from the subscribers to modify the information; and

a subscriber request component configured to receive requests from the plurality of subscribers and modify the information stored in the information tracking component in accordance with the requests,

wherein the publishing component is further configured to identify one or more of the plurality of subscribers affected by the modification to the information stored in the information tracking component, and to communicate, to the one or more of the plurality of subscribers affected by the modification, the information as modified.

25. A system as recited in claim 24, wherein the operation includes at least one of:

an insert operation which provides an instruction to add an item to the information tracking component;

an update operation which provides an instruction to update an item in the information tracking component;

or

a delete operation which provides an instruction to delete an item in the information tracking component.