Patent ID: 7085783

Claim:
An electronic catalog maintenance system, comprising: a dictionary database configured to store dictionary data of an electronic catalog, the dictionary data being given in a form of a tree structure formed by identifiers for uniquely identifying classes classifying products and attributes of the products; an editing unit configured to edit the dictionary data stored by the dictionary database by making changes including standard changes defined by a prescribed standard and out-of-standard changes not defined by the prescribed standard; a change status detection unit configured to detect a status of each change made by the editing unit, and to generate an identifier change data indicating the status of each change made by the editing unit and updates of identifiers to be made in the dictionary data; an identifier update unit configured to issue a new identifier of each class or attribute created by an out-of standard change made by the editing unit, and to retire an old identifier of each class or attribute deleted by an out-of-standard change made by the editing unit, according to the identifier change data generated by the change status detection unit; an identifier change database configured to store the identifier change data generated by the change status detection unit; a summary generation unit configured to simplify the identifier chance data by deleting any redundant portion from the identifier change data generated by the change status detection unit; wherein the identifier chance database stores the identifier change data as simplified by the summary generation unit; and a quality check unit configured to generate a dictionary system quality data by evaluating qualities of the dictionary data as a whole and each element constituting the dictionary data, according to prescribed quality check rules, after the dictionary data are edited by the editing unit; wherein the identifier change database also stores the dictionary system quality data generated by the quality check unit.