TRANSFORMING A DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES FOR WEB SERVICES

• US 20100250515A1
• Filed: 03/24/2009
• Published: 09/30/2010
• 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: Graupner, Sven, Young, Donald E., Basu, Sujoy, Ozonat, Mehmet Kivanc
• Granted Patent: US 10,754,896 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/709
• 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, comprising:

receiving a description of services desired by a service requester;

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

using the extracted information to transform the description of services desired by the service requestor into an improved description of services.

2. ) The method of claim 1 further comprising, providing the description of services to a search engine that discovers the web sites.

3. ) The method of claim 1 further comprising:

extracting keywords from the description of services;

providing the extracted keywords to a search engine that discovers web sites that provide services described by the keywords.

4. ) The method of claim 1 further comprising, presenting the service requester with differences between the description of services and the extracted information on services offered by the service providers.

5. ) The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining terms common at a majority of the web sites, the terms being used to describe the services offered by the service providers;

using the terms to generate the improved description of services;

using the improved description of services to produce an ordered list of service providers that best meet requirements of the service requestor.

6. ) A computer, comprising:

a processor that analyzes information on services offered at web sites of different web service providers, discovers commonalities among the services offered by the different web service providers, and outputs results of the commonalities to a service requestor requesting the services.

7. ) The computer of claim 6, wherein the output includes a list of terms used by a majority of the different web service providers at the web sites to identify information that the service providers need to enable the service requester to generate an improved description of desired services.

8. ) The computer of claim 6, wherein the output includes questions used on forms by a majority of the different web service providers at the web sites.

9. ) The computer of claim 6, wherein the output includes a comparison of a search request for services desired by the service requestor and the services offered at the web sites by the different web service providers.

10. ) The computer of claim 6, wherein the processor uses the commonalities to enhance a textual description of services desired by the service requestor.

11. ) A tangible computer readable storage medium having instructions for causing a computer to execute a method, comprising:

providing a description of services by a service requestor to a search engine that discovers web sites of services providers;

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

analyzing the extracted information to discover similarities of the services offered by the service providers; and

providing an analysis of the similarities to the service requestor to transform and enhance the description of services.

12. ) The tangible computer readable storage medium of claim 11 further comprising, presenting the service requestor with differences between the description of services and the extracted information on services offered by the service providers.

13. ) The tangible computer readable storage medium of claim 11 further comprising, refining, by the service requestor, the description of services to add options available from the service provider, the options not being known to the service requester before the service requestor provided the description of services to the search engine.

14. ) The tangible computer readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the similarities include types of questions asked on forms at the web sites of the service providers and terminology used at the web sites to describe services being offered.

15. ) The tangible computer readable storage medium of claim 11 further comprising, processing the extracted information to remove unnecessary description that describes the services offered by the service providers at the web sites.