Patent ID: 7447785
Filing Date: 2008-11-04
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. In a network environment that includes a client computing system and one or more server computing systems that host a network site that provides a plurality of offerings, each offering having its own context governing the operation of the corresponding offering, a method for the one or more server computing systems providing the context of each of the offerings in a memory efficient manner, the method comprising the following: an act of storing at a first context node within a hierarchical arrangement of a plurality of context nodes, a complete context of the first offering of the plurality of offerings, the complete context of the first offering representing a default context for the network site, and the first context node representing the first offering of the plurality of offerings; an act of storing at a second context node within the hierarchical arrangement of the plurality of context nodes, a context of a second offering of the plurality of offerings, the second context node being at a lower hierarchical level than the first context node and the second context node representing the second offering of the plurality of offerings, the context of the second offering representing the context of a sub-component of the network site, the second context including a reference to an intermediate context node at an intermediate hierarchical level between the first context node and the second context node, the intermediate context node representing a higher level offering between the first offering and the second offering, and further including one or more incremental context changes describing how to establish the context of the second offering from the context of the higher level offering represented by the intermediate context node; an act of receiving a request for the second offering; an act of traversing from the context of the second offering to the context of the first offering to accumulate incremental context changes at intermediate offering levels between the second offering and the first offering; an act of establishing a complete context of the second offering, comprising: an act of using the established complete context of the second offering to govern how the second offering is provided in response to the request.