Patent ID: 7308421

Claim:
In a computer system, a method of preparing a price quote for a product that is selected from among a plurality of products, comprising: determining whether said product is a member of a particular product collection, including evaluating a dynamic selection rule set associated with said particular product collection; and when said product is determined to be a member of said particular product collection, the method further comprising: identifying one or more price rules associated with said particular product collection; and applying said price rules to said product in order to determine said price quote for said product, wherein said one or more price rules associated with said product collection are determined in accordance with a pricing scheme that is associated with said product collection, wherein said pricing scheme includes at least one inheritance rule to be applied when at least two price rules of said pricing scheme having a similar rule type at different rule levels of a rule hierarchy are applicable to a given product, and wherein the at least one inheritance rule filters out at least one price rule of each of the different rule levels for the given product, at least one assertion rule which defines which of the at least two price rules to ignore when a specific price or price rule type has been applied, at least one arbitration rule for defining a value to use when several price rule are applicable to the given product, and at least one connectivity rule, and wherein the at least one connectivity rule defines interaction between other price rules of said pricing scheme, including combining and prioritizing the other price rules.