Importance

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Abstract

A business application integrates a company's internal business systems with an e-commerce web site, so that company personnel can manage their business with a business application that seamlessly exports relevant, up-to-date data to a web site designed to interact with customers across the Web. The business application provides business functions for manipulating merchandising data stored in a merchandising database. In addition, to accommodate an intermittent connection to the Internet or otherwise to the web hosting server, the business application supports the generation of a replica, from the merchandising database, that can be exported to a web hosting server. A web application executing at the web hosting server generates web pages based on merchandising data stored in the partial replica. The customer can provide feedback, possibly representing purchase orders or customer information changes, for example, that can be automatically entered into the company's business system. Alternatively, the customer can download a client replica, generated from the partial replica at the web hosting server, for use during periods of disconnection from the web hosting server. Thereafter, the client replica and the partial replica can be synchronized to update each other with modified data. Furthermore, the partial replica and the merchandising database can also be synchronized.

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First Claim