Patent ID: 7603371

Claim:
An object-based profile management system, comprising: a network interface for connecting to and interfacing with a first network where one or more servers reside, where at least one web site is hosted by one of said servers, and wherein said at least one web site is accessible by users via user computers over a second network; a central processing unit coupled to said network interface; and a computer readable storage medium storing computer instructions executable by said central processing unit to: define and manage a profile object to represent profile data related to a user's activity on said web site, wherein said profile object has a uniform addressing syntax, wherein said uniform addressing syntax has one or more profile sections, each of which defines one or more attributes and storage semantic specifying where and how attribute values corresponding to said one or more attributes are stored, wherein each attribute is assigned a name that is unique within a profile section and wherein each profile section is designated as persistent or non-persistent; receive a profile management command based on said uniform addressing syntax to retrieve information provided by said one or more profile sections and said one or more attributes of said profile object referencing said profile data related to said user's activity on said web site, wherein said profile management command contains an identification of said user and at least one profile section or attribute defined in said profile object; and retrieve or modify said profile data referenced by said identification of said user and said at least one profile section or attribute, wherein said uniform addressing syntax enables said profile data to be stored across multiple data storage locations, wherein said multiple data storage locations store data in different formats, and wherein said multiple data storage locations include one or more non-relational data storage locations.