Patent ID: 7620571

Claim:
A computer program product tangibly embodied in a computer readable medium, the computer program product including instructions that, when executed, perform an off-line product availability check at a user computer, the computer program product configured to: in an on-line mode in which a user computer system is able to receive information from a host computer system, receive, at the user computer system, product availability data associated with a plurality of different products, the product availability data comprising, for each of the plurality of different products, a determined one of multiple different availability categories as determined by the host computer system, the received product availability data not also comprising a quantity of product available for each of the plurality of products; store the received product availability data in a data collection stored on the user computer system, the received product availability data comprising the determined one of multiple different available categories for each of the plurality of products; receive an input identifying one or more particular products corresponding to the stored product availability data in the data collection stored on the user computer system; in an off-line mode in which the product availability data on the host computer system is not accessible by the user computer system: perform, on the user computer system an off-line product availability check for the one or more particular products, the off-line product availability check comprising retrieving, from the data collection, the stored product availability data for the one or more particular products of which the off-line product availability check is being performed including the determined one of the plurality of availability categories for each of the one or more of the plurality of particular products, and provide a visual display on the user computer system of the determined one of the plurality of availability categories for each of the one or more of the plurality of particular products, the displayed availability categories being the availability category for the product as determined by the host computer system.