Patent ID: 6970840

Claim:
A method for providing virtual access to information distributed across heterogeneous catalog systems of different suppliers, wherein each of the catalog systems include respective catalog databases comprising a collection of product/service information represented as a hierarchy of product categories, where each product category contains a list of products, comprising: (a) subscribing a first catalog server to at least a portion of the information stored on one or more remote catalog systems, thereby creating a subscribing catalog server, wherein the subscribing catalog server and the remote catalog systems are provided with a catalog format that defines how to represent and store the product/service information, and a catalog protocol that defines how to communicate the catalog formatted information, wherein subscribing the first catalog server further includes, (i) exchanging authentication information between the subscribing catalog server and the remote catalog systems; (ii) providing the subscribing catalog server with subscription links to desired targets on the remote catalog system, wherein targets represent nodes in the catalog trees stored in the catalog databases of the remote catalog systems; (iii) establishing replication scheduling parameters between the subscribing catalog server and the remote catalog systems, wherein the scheduling parameters indicate the times and events that trigger the replication of catalog data from the remote catalog systems to the subscribing catalog server; and (iv) acknowledging, by each of the remote catalog systems, the authentication information, the subscription links, and the scheduling parameters established between the subscribing catalog server and the remote catalog system, and granting the subscribing catalog server access to the remote catalog data; (b) performing a replication process using the catalog protocol to synchronize information on the subscribing catalog server with the subscribed information on the remote catalog systems; and (c) allowing a user of the subscribing catalog server to search and browse the synchronized information, thereby providing one site for viewing information from multiple catalog servers.