Patent ID: 7277863

Claim:
A computer-implemented communications exchange using one or more computer systems for facilitating communication among a plurality of supply chain participants in an electronic marketplace to facilitate one or more marketplace transactions, comprising: a communication interface for sending and receiving messages among the plurality of supply chain participants in the electronic marketplace to facilitate one or more marketplace transactions; an event container connected to the communication interface for receiving messages from the communication interface as events, one or more of the messages and their corresponding events each being associated with one or more marketplace transactions; a condition container connected to the event container, the condition container comprising a plurality of condition instances each specifying one or more rules for determining whether to initiate an action defined by an action instance associated with the condition instance, a particular condition instance specifying whether to initiate the action defined in the associated action instance to facilitate one or more marketplace transactions in the electronic marketplace; and an action container connected to the condition container and containing a plurality of action instances, each action instance associated with one or more of the condition instances for defining an action to, when initiated, facilitate one or more marketplace transactions in the electronic marketplace; when one or more events received by the event container from the communication interface are determined to match a predicate of a particular condition instance, the action, defined in the action instance associated with the particular condition instance, is initiated by the communications exchange to facilitate the one or more marketplace transactions associated with the one or more events determined to match the predicate of the particular condition instance, wherein at least one of the condition instances specifies at least one rule requiring the presence of a specified plurality of specified events in the event container for initiating a specified one of the action instances in the action container, wherein each event is defined to expire within a respective selected time period if unused, and wherein each specified event is stored in the event container only until one of the following occurs: the condition instance initiating the specified event, or expiration of the specified event.