Patent ID: 8402068

Claim:
A system for retrieving, normalizing and storing product information and, said system comprising: for a data collector to retrieve product information, over a distributed network, from at least one external source and automatically to associate said retrieved product information for an identified product with prestored product information for the identified product, said data collector creating markup language for the identified product, said markup language including a first attribute-value pair that includes a first attribute and a first value; a normalization engine to normalize said markup language for the identified product, the normalization engine to translate the first attribute to a second attribute responsive to an identification of the first attribute in a list that includes a plurality of attributes that are associated with the identified product and the second attribute, the second attribute being a canonical representation of the plurality of attributes respectively: and a database to store the normalized second attribute for the identified product with the prestored product information for the identified product, the data collector to store the second attribute for the identified product with the prestored product information for the identified product in the database.