HISTORICAL VEHICLE PARTS DATABASE SYSTEM

• US 20100191621A1
• Filed: 03/17/2010
• Published: 07/29/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/31/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: HyperQuest, Inc. (Solera Holdings Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: HyperQuest, Inc. (Solera Holdings Incorporated)
• Inventors: Hogan, Dennis, Hogan, Jeffrey J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,945,478 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/28
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0875 Itemisation or classification of parts, supplies or services, e.g. bill of materials
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/20 Administration of product repair or maintenance
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/201 Price look-up processing, e.g. updating
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance

Abstract

A historical vehicle replacement part database system is disclosed.

Claims

1. A computer system for processing historical vehicle replacement part database queries, the computer system comprising:

a data preprocessing unit programmed to receive raw vehicle parts inventory data as input data, the raw vehicle parts inventory data including a digital representation of a supplier'"'"'s vehicle parts inventory available at one or more given locations on a given date, and to preprocess the input data into historical vehicle replacement part database records, each record corresponding to a vehicle part in the supplier'"'"'s inventory such that the database records represent availability of specific parts at the one or more given locations on the given date;

a database server coupled to the preprocessing unit and programmed to store the historical vehicle replacement part database records in a database system so as to create a historical chronology of vehicle parts availability information and to perform processing to retrieve historical vehicle replacement part records from the database system;

a web server programmed to provide a service to a client system, the service including an interface for receiving a user query including a first vehicle parts list, a make model and year of a vehicle, a historical date, and a geographic area of interest, the web server further adapted to provide to the client a result having a second vehicle parts list including those parts corresponding to the parts in the first vehicle parts list and which are suitable for use on the make, model and year of the vehicle and which were available on the historical date, were located within the geographic area of interest, and which conform to a rule set, the result including data received from the database server in response to a database query comprising information from the user query and information from the rule set; and

an application server programmed to operatively connect to the database server and to the web server and to generate dynamic content for transmitting to the client system, the dynamic content including a user interface adapted to receive user input and to output result data based upon the result of the database query.

2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the rule set includes vehicle parts guidelines of the user, vehicle parts guidelines of a second party, a set of custom vehicle parts guidelines, or a combination thereof.

3. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the historical date includes a historical date range.

4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the geographic area of interest includes a user modifiable location and radius.

5. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the result further includes a price for each part as of the historical date, a type of each part, a supplier name and contact information for each part, a description of each part and a distance of each part from a location associated with the use of the part in a vehicle repair or from a user specified location.

6. The computer system of claim 1, wherein a change in a non-terminal aspect of a historical vehicle replacement part record is added to the database system as an additional database record to track the change in the non-terminal aspect.

7. A computerized method for processing historical vehicle replacement part database queries, the computerized method comprising:

receiving input data at a data preprocessing unit, the input data including a digital representation of vehicle parts in a supplier'"'"'s vehicle parts inventory;

preprocessing the input data using the data preprocessing unit to generate historical vehicle replacement part database records each corresponding to one of the vehicle parts in the supplier'"'"'s vehicle parts inventory, the preprocessing including converting part name and description information for each part into a unique part identifier associated with each part record to permit location of a part record using translation of the part name and description information into a corresponding part identifier;

storing each historical vehicle replacement part database record in a database system using a database server coupled to the preprocessing unit;

receiving a user query at a web server, the user query being transmitted by a client system and including a first vehicle parts list, a vehicle make, model and year, a historical date, and a geographic area of interest;

transmitting the user query to an application server coupled to the web server by a data network, the application server being programmed to operatively connect to the database server and to the web server over the data network;

generating a database query comprising information from the user query and information from a rule set, the database query being generated by the application server;

querying, at the application server, the database system by sending the database query to the database server;

receiving a query result from the database server at the application server, the query result being responsive to the querying, the query result including a second list of vehicle parts matching the database query, the second list of vehicle parts including those parts corresponding to the parts in the first vehicle parts list and which are suitable for use on the vehicle make, model and year and which were available on the historical date, were located within the geographic area of interest, and which conform to a rule set;

generating dynamic content for transmitting to the client system using the application server, the dynamic content including a portion of the query result; and

transmitting the dynamic content to the client system in response to the user query received from the client over an external communication link.

8. The computerized method of claim 7, further including:

searching the database for a part identifier based on the user query;

searching the database for a part identifier that is interchangeable with the part identifier;

loading a filtering process with a portion of the rule set relevant to the database query; and

refining the query result according to the rule set by using the filtering process to remove parts from the query result that are not acceptable for use according to the rule set.

9. The computerized method of claim 7, wherein the rule set includes vehicle parts guidelines of the user, vehicle parts guidelines of a second party, a set of custom vehicle parts guidelines, or a combination thereof.

10. The computerized method of claim 7, wherein the historical date includes a historical date range.

11. The computerized method of claim 7, wherein the geographic area of interest includes a location and a radius.

12. The computerized method of claim 7, wherein the query result further includes a price for each part as of the historical date, a type of each part, a supplier name and contact information for each part, a description of each part and a distance of each part from a location associated with the use of the part in a vehicle repair or from a user specified location.

13. The computerized method of claim 7, wherein a change in a non-terminal aspect of one of the historical vehicle replacement part records is added to the database system as an additional database record such that the change in the non-terminal aspect is tracked in the database system.

14. A computer readable medium having stored thereon software instructions for processing historical vehicle replacement part database queries, the software instructions including a first portion, a second portion, a third portion and a fourth portion,

the first portion, when executed by a first processor, causes the first processor to perform operations comprising:

receiving input data at a data preprocessing unit, the input data including a digital representation of vehicle parts in a supplier'"'"'s vehicle parts inventory;

preprocessing the input data using the data preprocessing unit to generate historical vehicle replacement part database records each including a part identifier corresponding to one of the vehicle parts in the supplier'"'"'s vehicle parts inventory, the part identifier being generated based on part name and description;

the second portion, when executed by a second processor, causes the second processor to perform operations comprising;

storing each historical vehicle replacement part database record in a database system using a database server coupled to the preprocessing unit;

retrieving one or more historical vehicle replacement part database records based on a received query;

the third portion, when executed by a third processor, causes the third processor to perform operations comprising;

receiving a user query at a web server, the user query being transmitted by a client system and including a first vehicle parts list, a vehicle make, model and year, a historical date range, and a geographic area of interest;

transmitting the user query to an application server coupled to the web server by a data network, the application server being programmed to operatively connect to the database server and to the web server over the data network;

the fourth portion, when executed by a fourth processor, causes the fourth processor to perform operations comprising;

generating a database query comprising information from the user query and information from a rule set, the database query being generated by the application server;

querying the database system using the database query at the application server;

receiving a query result from the database server at the application server, the query result being responsive to the querying, the query result including a second list of vehicle parts matching the database query, the second vehicle parts list including those parts corresponding to the parts in the first vehicle parts list and which are suitable for use on the make, model and year of the vehicle and which were available during the historical date range, were located within the geographic area of interest, and which conform to a rule set;

generating dynamic content for transmitting to the client system using the application server, the dynamic content including result data based upon the query result; and

transmitting the dynamic content to the web server in response to the user query received from the client such that the web server provides the dynamic content to the client over an external communication link in response to the user query.

15. The computer readable medium of claim 14, wherein the software instructions are adapted for execution by a distributed processing system.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 14, wherein the query result further includes a price for each part during the historical date range, a type of each part, a supplier name and contact information for each part, a description of each part and a distance of each part from a location associated with the use of the part in a vehicle repair or from a user specified location.