Patent ID: 7333996

Claim:
A method for managing contract data, comprising: receiving a contract datagroup D G by a decentralized execution system (DES) from a procurement contract management system (PCMS) over a data path within a computer network, said contract datagroup D G selected from the group consisting of a contract dataset and a contract deltadataset, said contract datagroup D G identifying N purchase items purchasable from a vendor V keyed to the contract datagroup D G , said N being an integer of at least 2, said contract datagroup D G identifying the vendor V if the contract datagroup D G is the contract dataset, said DES comprising a relational database that includes contract datasets, vendor datasets having vendors, and purchase item datasets having purchase items; determining which, if any, of the N purchase items identified in the contract datagroup D G match a purchase item in the purchase item datasets and determining a total number K of such purchase items in D G that do not so match a purchase item in the purchase item datasets, said K being an integer satisfying 0≦K<N; if the contract datagroup D G is the contract dataset then determining that the vendor V matches a vendor in the vendor datasets and adding a subset of D G to the relational database, said subset of D G excluding the K purchase items from D G ; if the contract datagroup D G is the contract deltadataset then adding to the first contract dataset in the relational database R purchase items of D G , wherein D G is keyed to a first contract dataset in the relational database, and wherein the R purchase items of D G consist of all purchase items of D G exclusive of the K purchase items of D G .