Transforming a description of services for web services

• US 10,754,896 B2
• Filed: 03/24/2009
• Issued: 08/25/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 03/24/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Ozonat, Mehmet Kivanc, Graupner, Sven, Basu, Sujoy, Young, Donald E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Trujillo, James
• Assistant Examiner(s): Mueller, Kurt A
• Application Number:
  US12/409,561
• Publication Number:
  US 20100250515A1
• Time in Patent Office: 4,172 Days
• Field of Search: 707708
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

One embodiment is a method that receives a description of services desired by a service requestor and then crawls web sites to extract information on services offered by service providers. The extracted information is used to transform the description of services desired by the service requestor into an improved description of services.

Claims

1. A method executed by a computer system, comprising:

analyzing an initial description of services provided by a service requestor to identify a first set of key terms;

searching a public network with the first set of key terms to discover web sites of service providers offering services associated with the first set of key terms;

crawling the web sites to extract information on services offered by the service providers;

identifying web forms for the service requestor to initiate a business with the service providers from the extracted information, wherein each respective web form of the identified web forms is associated with a corresponding service provider of the service providers, and includes questions asked by the corresponding service provider;

developing filtered information based on comparing the identified web forms and finding common words in the identified web forms;

transforming the initial description into an improved description of services based on a comparison of data included in the filtered information; and

applying the improved description in;

identifying a second set of key terms;

searching the public network to discover further web sites of further service providers offering services associated with the second set of key terms;

crawling the further web sites to extract information on services offered;

identifying further web forms for the service requestor to initiate a business with the further service providers from the extracted information of the further web sites, and developing filtered information based on the identified further web forms.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein searching the public network with the first set of key terms includes providing the first set of key terms to a search engine that discovers the web sites responsive to the first set of key terms.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the initial description of services to identify the first set of key terms comprises employing singular value decomposition (SVD).

4. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the initial description of services to identify the first set of key terms comprises employing statistical learning and cross-correlation.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the initial description of services to identify the first set of key terms comprises identifying terms within the initial description of services, determining a frequency at which the identified terms occur within the initial description of services, and identifying key terms based on the frequencies at which the identified terms occur within the initial description of services.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the initial description of services to identify the first set of key terms comprises using terms identified from analyzing the initial description of services to identify and retrieve a plurality of past description of services documents having descriptions of services associated with the terms, and further analyzing the descriptions of services of the past description of services documents to determine the first set key terms.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein transforming the initial description of services includes identifying commonalities across filtered information from the service providers, presenting the service requestor with differences between the initial description of services and a summary of the commonalities, and revising the initial description of services based on the differences to provide the improved description of services.

8. A computer, comprising:

a processor; and

a non-transitory storage medium storing instructions executable on the processor to;

analyze an initial description of services provided by a service requestor to identify a first set of key terms in the initial description of services,

search for web sites of web service providers with the first set of key terms,

crawl the web sites to extract information on services offered by the web service providers,

identify web forms for the service requestor to initiate a business with the web service providers from the extracted information, wherein each respective web form of the identified web forms is associated with a corresponding web service provider of the web service providers, and includes questions asked by the corresponding web service provider,

develop filtered information based on comparing the identified web forms and finding common words in the identified web forms that include questions asked by the web service providers,

receive an improved description of services produced by transforming the initial description of services based on the filtered information, and

apply the improved description to;

identify a second set of key terms;

search the public network to discover further web sites of further web service providers offering services associated with the second set of key terms;

crawl the further web sites to extract information on services offered;

identify further web forms for the service requestor to initiate a business with the further web service providers from the extracted information of the further web sites, and developing filtered information based on the identified further web forms.

9. The computer of claim 8, wherein finding the common words in the identified web forms comprises finding words used by a majority of the web service providers.

10. The computer of claim 8, wherein finding the common words comprises finding common questions used by a majority of the web service providers.

11. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions for causing a computer to:

analyze a first description of web services provided in a description of services document from a service requestor to identify a first set of key terms in the description of services document;

provide the first set of key terms to a search engine to discover web sites of web service providers offering web services associated with the first set of key terms;

crawl the web sites to extract information on web services offered by the web service providers;

identify web forms for the service requestor to initiate a business with the web service providers from the extracted information, wherein each respective web form of the identified web forms is associated with a corresponding web service provider of the web service providers, and includes questions asked by the corresponding web service provider;

develop filtered information based on comparing the identified web forms and finding common words in the identified web forms;

receive an improved description of web services offered by the web service providers produced by transforming the first description of web services based on the filtered information; and

apply the improved description of web services offered by the web service providers comprising;

analyzing the improved description of web services to identify a second set of key terms;

searching a network with the second set of key terms to discover further web sites of further web service providers offering web services associated with the second set of key terms;

crawling the further web sites to extract information on web services offered by the further web service providers;

identifying further web forms for the service requestor to initiate a business with the further web service providers from the extracted information of the further web sites, and developing filtered information based on the identified further web forms.

12. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the instructions are to cause the computer to further present the service requestor with differences between the first description of web services and the filtered information on web services offered by the web service providers.

13. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein finding the common words comprises finding common questions asked in the identified web forms.