Inheritance and relationship to directory information in an e-commerce application

1. A system for dynamically determining a set of relevant rule instances based on a set of context attribute values and a hierarchically organized rule data store, comprising:

a directory server of rule instances having hierarchical structure;

an attribute data store of said rule instances optimized to provide a set of hierarchically relevant context attribute values, based on the set of context attribute values; and

a rules engine configured to provide the set of context attribute values to the attribute data store, and to determine a set of relevant rule instances, based on the hierarchically relevant context attribute values from the attribute data store, and to resolve conflicts between the set of relevant rule instances using directed acyclic graph(DAG) conflict resolution strategy comprising the steps:

placing the set of relevant rule instances in a DAG based hierarchy based on a most significant role as determined by static role ordering wherein rule instances with identical role values will occupy an identical DAG node (multiple value node);

for each DAG node having multiple values, forming the rule instances at that node repetitively according to a second most significant role until each DAG node possess either a single role value or multiple role values that are duplicates:

for each DAG node having multiple duplicate values, forming a common child DAG node by applying duplicate resolution strategy;

for each DAG having multiple parents, inserting a new parent DAG node creating a single child DAG node having a child DAG node value; and

evaluating each parent DAG node beginning at the single DAG child node using recursive evaluation wherein recursive evaluation comprises combining parent DAG node values when there is more than one parent DAG node, and, when there is a single parent DAG node, combining a single parent DAG node value to the child DAG node value using inheritance resolution strategy.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the hierarchically structured attribute data store comprises a lightweight database application protocol compliant directory server.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the hierarchically structured attribute data store comprises a buyer data store, a seller data store, and an object data store.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein:

the buyer data store is managed by a buyer organization;

the seller data store is managed by a seller organization that is operationally independent from the buyer organization; and

the object data store is managed by an object organization.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein buyer data store and the seller data store comprise information relating to a plurality of organizations, wherein each organization has a unique identifier within the system.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein the buyer data store and the seller data store further comprise information relating to a plurality of organization divisions, such that each organization division has a unique identifier within the system.

7. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a context provider that comprises an electronic commerce application and provides a context comprising an application configuration parameter and the set of context attribute valves.

8. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a compiler to provide optimized rule instances to said data store.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the rules engine is configured to filter out a set of rules which have an attribute value that is not among the set of hierarchically relevant context attribute values.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the rules engine is configured to filter out a set of rules which have an application configuration parameter that is different than an application configuration parameter of a received context.

11. A system for dynamically determining a set of relevant rule instances based on a set of context attribute values, comprising:

means for having rule instances with hierarchical structure;

means for having a hierarchical structure optimized to provide a set of hierarchically relevant context attribute values, based on the set of context attribute values; and

means for providing the set of context attribute values to the attribute data store means, and to determine the set of relevant rule instances, based on the hierarchically relevant context attribute values from the attribute data store, and to resolve conflicts between the set of relevant rule instances using directed acyclic graph (DAG) conflict resolution strategy comprising the steps:

placing the set of relevant rule instances in a DAG based hierarchy based on a most significant role as determined by static role ordering wherein rule instances with identical role values will occupy an identical DAG node (multiple value node);

for each DAG node having multiple values, forming the rule instances at that node repetitively according to a second most significant role until each DAG node possess either a single role value or multiple role values that are duplicates;

for each DAG node having multiple duplicate values, forming a common child DAG node applying duplicate resolution strategy;

for each DAG having multiple parents, inserting a new parent DAG node creating a single child DAG node having a child DAG node value; and

evaluating each parent DAG node beginning at the single DAG child node using recursive evaluation wherein recursive evaluation comprises combining parent DAG node values when there is more than one parent DAG node, and, when there is a single parent DAG node, combining a single parent DAG node value to the child DAG node value using inheritance resolution strategy.