Centralized Hub for Electronic Catalog Data Standardization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing electronic catalogs across multiple parties is cumbersome due to complex database structures, leading to obsolete, redundant, and conflicting information, and requires specialized tools, making it difficult for administrators to maintain and compare catalogs across different formats and systems.
Innovation Solution
A centralized collaboration hub receives and updates records from various sources, converting them into a common format for comparison and reconciliation, allowing multiple parties to manage and update catalog content efficiently, while ensuring data quality and consistency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If specialized tools and complex database structures are used to manage electronic catalogs, then the catalog can be stored and retrieved efficiently, but the difficulty of managing and maintaining the catalog increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a centralized collaboration hub as an intermediary layer between multiple database systems and the user interface. This hub receives catalog data from various sources (vendor master, materiel master, item master tables), standardizes it into a common format, and makes it available through a unified interface. This resolves the contradiction by maintaining the efficiency of complex database structures while hiding their complexity from users through standardization and centralization.
Solution Approach 2:
The collaboration hub serves multiple functions: it acts as a data standardization layer, a distribution mechanism, a comparison tool, and a collaboration platform. By making the system multi-functional, the patent reduces the need for separate specialized tools for each database system, thereby improving ease of operation while maintaining productivity.
2Quantity of substance
If data is stored in multiple tables and databases, then comprehensive catalog information can be maintained, but obsolete, redundant and conflicting information becomes hidden
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts catalog information from multiple disparate tables and databases (vendor master, materiel master, item master) and consolidates it into a standardized format at the collaboration hub. This extraction process makes previously hidden obsolete, redundant, and conflicting information visible and manageable, allowing users to see only current, validated data while maintaining access to comprehensive information sources.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where the collaboration hub receives updates from multiple sources, compares them against each other and against predefined standards, and distributes reconciled information back to users and systems. This feedback loop ensures that obsolete or conflicting information is identified and corrected, maintaining information accuracy while preserving comprehensive data coverage.
3Ease of manufacture
If specialized formats are used for different catalogs, then each catalog can be optimized for its specific system, but the ability to compare catalogs across different formats becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The collaboration hub serves as a universal intermediary that accepts catalog data in various specialized formats from different systems, converts them to a common standardized format, and enables comparison and collaboration. This intermediary layer preserves the optimization benefits of specialized formats while providing uniform access and comparison capabilities across all catalogs.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the format parameters of catalog data by converting different specialized formats into a standardized common format at the collaboration hub. This parameter transformation allows catalogs from different systems to be compared and managed uniformly, maintaining the advantages of format-specific optimization while enabling cross-system versatility.
4Adaptability or versatility
If manual operations are used to convert and modify catalog data, then flexibility in handling different formats is achieved, but the time required for maintenance increases
Solution Approach 1:
The collaboration hub implements self-service capabilities where the system automatically receives, standardizes, and distributes catalog data without requiring manual intervention. The hub autonomously handles format conversions, data validation, and distribution to multiple systems, thereby maintaining flexibility in handling different formats while significantly reducing maintenance time and effort.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables continuous automatic operation where the collaboration hub continuously receives updates from various sources, processes them through standardized formats, and distributes them to appropriate systems without interruption or manual intervention. This continuous automated action eliminates the time-consuming manual conversion process while maintaining adaptability to different data formats.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention allows multiple parties to collaborate on managing the content of an electronic catalog. In one embodiment, the invention can include receiving at a hub records from a first source, receiving at the hub updates of the records from a second source, and transferring the updated records to the first source. In another embodiment, the invention can include transferring to a hub records having information related to items in an electronic catalog and receiving updates of the records from the hub.