Patent ID: 6990488

Claim:
A method in a computing system for updating the availability status attributed to predefined groups of offered items, comprising: initializing a FIFO queue of item groups to be empty; receiving a plurality of messages, each message identifying an offered item and indicating that the availability status of the identified item has changed; in response to each received message: identifying any item groups containing the identified item; for each identified item group: if the identified item group is not present in the queue of item groups, appending the item group to the queue; when a timer expires: for a predetermined number of item groups in the queue of item groups: removing the item group from the queue of item groups; updating the availability status attributed to the item group, based upon availability statuses of the items within the item group; if, after removing the predetermined number of item groups, the queue of item groups is empty, setting a timer having a first duration; and if, after removing the predetermined number of item groups, the queue of item groups is not empty, setting a timer having a second duration that is shorter than the first duration.