JPH10111892A - Electronic shopping system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an electronic shopping system for switching the display of respective product data by a time limit and to test display new product data registered to a data base without changing existing data inside the electronic shopping system by providing a display valid time period in the respective product data to be a catalog. SOLUTION: A page generation function 105 and a data base retrieval function 106 called from a WWW server 103 retrieve a product data base by the present time inside this electronic shopping system, shop IDs uniquely imparted to respective shops and product IDs, compare the display valid time periods set to the respective product data and the present time and generate only the product data present within a range into a page. Also, by arbitrarily setting the present time and sending a page generation request by a catalog preparing person, a virtual present time generation function 107 dynamically changes the present time at the time of product data base retrieval and test displays the data of the optional display valid time period registered to the data base by the catalog preparing person.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to an electronic shopping system which is a virtual shopping street on a network, and more particularly to management of product data.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In electronic shopping, merchandise data is managed using a database in order to manage merchandise data serving as a catalog. Product data includes product name, product code,
It generates information that consists of information such as price and explanatory text, and that searches the database in response to a user request and that can be displayed in a catalog.

[0003] In the conventional method, all the data of merchandise in the database is displayed as a catalog regardless of time. Therefore, in order to automatically replace product data during a time sale, a bargain sale, or an expiration date of a catalog during which a display of product data is to be changed within a certain period of time, the contents of the database are replaced.

[0004]

In the above-mentioned prior art, since all the product data in the database is displayed as a catalog regardless of time, it is desired to change the display of the product data only within a certain time. Product data could not be automatically replaced at time sale or catalog expiration.

[0005] It is an object of the present invention to enable automatic replacement of product data at the time of sale, bargain sale, or the expiration date of a catalog in which the display of product data is desired to be changed within a certain period of time.

Another object of the present invention is to enable a new product data display test by one system by virtually changing the current time of the system.

[0007]

An object of the present invention is to add an item indicating a display expiration date to product data serving as a catalog in a database, and determine the display expiration date so that the product data to be displayed can be read from the database. Search and
Achieved by performing time management of product data.

[0008]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS One embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a basic system configuration of an electronic shopping system to which the present invention is applied. WW
The W browser 101 is activated by a purchaser of a product, and communicates with the WWW server 103 via the network 102. W
The WW server 103 requests the page generation system 104 to display a product catalog in response to a request from the WWW browser 101, and receives a page for browser display as a result.
Send to browser.

The page generation system 104 has a page generation function 1
05, database search function 106, virtual current time generation function 1
07, the template 108, the product data DB 109, the session DB 110, and the like are used. The template is a file serving as a template of a page used by the page generation function, and the product data DB 109 is a database storing product data displayed as a catalog. The page generation function 105 receives a request from the WWW server 103 and
And W based on data from the database search function 106
This function generates HTML data to be sent to the WW browser 101. The database search function 106 is the product data DB 109
This is a function to search for product data within the display expiration date by the product number specified from. The virtual current time generation function 107 generates a virtual current time based on the time specified by the user,
This is a function for passing the current time generated when the database search function 106 searches the database.

From the WWW server 103 to the page generation system 104
Page generation function when there is a request to display the product catalog
105 fetches a template file from the template 108 based on the information sent from the WWW client and analyzes the template file. Here, if product data is required, the database search function 106 searches the database based on the specified product number. When the database search is successful, the page generation function 105 combines the search result with the contents of the fetched template file and generates a page to be displayed on the WWW browser 101 of the client. The generated page is sent to the WWW server, sent to the WWW client 101 via the network 102,
Is displayed.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a product data DB for holding product data. Product data DB is store ID, product I
D, display start date, display end date, price, description, etc. In addition to this data item, a product category, a tax category, a shipping fee, and the like can be configured as a database. The store ID is a unique code assigned to each store opened in the shopping system. When the display expiration date is not specified, it is possible to set so that the expiration date can be ignored by specifying “*” in the data items of the display start date and the display end date. To search the product database, a store ID, a product ID, and the current time are required. By specifying these data items, product data is acquired from the database. Here, by specifying a real time as the current time, it is possible to time-control the display of each product data. Also, when a catalog creator creates a new catalog and registers product data with a display start date that is earlier than the current date in the database, by specifying the current time to a time earlier than the current time, only the catalog creator can Can perform a display test of the registered product data. For example, a user other than the catalog creator cannot specify the current time. This makes it possible to perform a test with one system without building a test system.

FIG. 3 shows a flow of a process of searching a product database in the page generation process.
When displaying the product catalog, the WWW client 101
A store ID and a product ID are sent.

The actual flow will be described below. To search for product data from the product database, first search the database based on the store ID and product ID sent to you.
(302). Next, the display start date and the display end date indicating the display expiration date are obtained from the retrieved records (303). Next, it is determined whether the current time is within the display expiration date, and if it is not, the search result is returned to the page generation function 105 (30
Four). If not, an error message is returned (405).

[0014] When a search is made based on a category such as a product category or a tax category, a plurality of records are selected as a search result.

FIG. 4 shows a flow of a process for performing a test display. Only the catalog creator can perform a test display. The catalog creator can specify a virtual current time when logging into the system. The specified data is stored in the session DB 110 together with the session ID. The session ID is an identifier that is uniquely assigned to each time a purchaser enters the electronic shopping system for shopping. In this state, by sending a product catalog display request from the WWW client 101, the WWW server 103 obtains the session ID (401), searches the session DB 110 based on the session ID (402), and obtains the virtual current time. Is specified, the time is set as the current time (404) and the product database is searched (405), so that all the product data displayed in the specified time zone can be searched.

As described above, according to the present invention, a display expiration date is introduced into each product data to enable time control of each product data, and the current time is dynamically changed.
It is possible to perform a display test of new product data without requiring a test system.

The present invention is not limited to the above embodiment. The structure of the product data DB or the session DB is not limited to the present embodiment, and can be implemented with various changes. The present invention can be implemented by various methods without departing from the gist thereof.

[0018]

According to the present invention, in the electronic shopping system, it is possible to manage the display time of each product data serving as a catalog. Also, by dynamically changing the current time, a display test system is not required, and
There is an effect that a display test of new product data can be performed with one system.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram showing an outline of a system.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a product data DB.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the flow of a product data search process.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the flow of a test display process.

[Explanation of symbols]

 105: Page generation function 106: Database search function 109: Product data DB

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An electronic shopping system for purchasing goods on a network, wherein the display of the goods data can be switched according to the time limit by providing a display expiration date for the product data serving as a catalog. Shopping system. 2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the display start and end times can be specified for the product data to be a catalog, whereby the displayed product data can be changed according to the time. Electronic shopping system featuring. 3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the current time of the system can be virtually changed, and new product data serving as a catalog is set, and the current time is changed. An electronic shopping system characterized in that a display test can be performed by one system.