Abstract: A point-of-sale interface receives point-of-sale quantities for a number of individual items, as well as point-of-sale quantity for a miscellaneous group item that includes undifferentiated sales of one or more of the individual items. An item indexer calculates an item index for each individual item comprising a fraction of the miscellaneous group item sales attributable to the individual item. A sales disambiguator computes a revised point-of-sale quantity for each individual item using the item index and the point-of-sale quantities for the miscellaneous group item and the individual item.

Abstract: In response to a user activating a language switching mechanism to indicate a newly selected language, a language switch component sends a language key that corresponds to a first language sensitive element displayed in the user interface to a language resource manager. The language resource manager retrieves from a language resource bundle, which corresponds to the newly selected language, a second language sensitive element. The language switch component then replaces the first language sensitive element with the second language sensitive element. The replacement process is then repeated for all language sensitive elements in the user interface.

Abstract: A point-of-sale interface receives point-of-sale quantities for a number of individual items, as well as point-of-sale quantity for a miscellaneous group item that includes undifferentiated sales of one or more of the individual items. An item indexer calculates an item index for at least one individual item, the item index comprising a fraction of the miscellaneous group item sales attributable to the individual item. A sales disambiguator then computes a revised point-of-sale quantity for the at least one individual item using the item index and the point-of-sale quantities for the miscellaneous group item and the at least one individual item.

Abstract: In response to a user activating a language switching mechanism to indicate a newly selected language, a language switch component sends a language key that corresponds to a first language sensitive element displayed in the user interface to a language resource manager. The language resource manager retrieves from a language resource bundle, which corresponds to the newly selected language, a second language sensitive element. The language switch component then replaces the first language sensitive element with the second language sensitive element. The replacement process is then repeated for all language sensitive elements in the user interface.

Abstract: A point-of-sale interface receives point-of-sale quantities for a number of individual items, as well as point-of-sale quantity for a miscellaneous group item that includes undifferentiated sales of one or more of the individual items. An item indexer calculates an item index for each individual item comprising a fraction of the miscellaneous group item sales attributable to the individual item. A sales disambiguator computes a revised point-of-sale quantity for each individual item using the item index and the point-of-sale quantities for the miscellaneous group item and the individual item.

Abstract: A system, method and various software products provide for automatic deferral and review of e-mail messages and other data objects in a networked computer system, by applying business rules to the messages as they are processed by post offices. The system includes rule enforcing post offices that store a plurality of business rules derived from business communication policies. The rule enforcing post offices receive messages from client applications and from other post offices and apply the business rules with a rule engine. The rule engine determines a set of actions, specified by business rules that are fired, to be applied to each message. The rule engine provides the actions to a distribution engine, which executes a highest priority action. Actions include releasing, deleting, returning, forwarding, or gating the message. Gating forwards the message to a gatekeeper, an administrator assigned to review messages for conformity with business policies or for other reasons.

Abstract: A data management system and method for storing and communicating different types of data allow variable lengths and hierarchical nesting of data records. Hierarchical structure is implicitly defined by relationships of length fields of data records. The system and method use data-containing records to store data and container records to contain other records in order to define the hierarchical structure and thereby greatly facilitate the movement and management of the stored data.

Abstract: A business demand based control system and method stores past business demand data during past time intervals for use with other data to compute business demands in such manner that the past business demand data is used to project the business demands in current and near-future time intervals. The system measures and stores the business demand data for a plurality of time intervals and a plurality of products or tasks, and projects the business demand for a plurality of products or tasks for near-future time intervals using percentage based demand curves. The system allows the creation of a number of demand curves for the items to determine near future demand, using defined functions and variables. Business demand projections for current and near-future time intervals are revised for a plurality of business items in response to variances in actual business demand data in time intervals just prior to the current time interval.

Abstract: An application programming interface facilitates development of portable, multithreaded application programs. An application is a collection of instances of agent classes. Agent classes are organized in class hierarchies because new subclass agents may be derived from existing base class agents. Each agent class has its own message dispatching function; this allows the application programmer to alter the message passing framework provided by the application programming interface. Each agent instance within the program is independent because it is a sub-process aware only of its own data and context. Multithreading is provided by the application programming interface which contains a master dispatcher process non-preemptively allocating time to individual agents. Therefore, an application's multithreading capability is independent of the platform's operating system. In addition, a thread of execution may be split when the currently activated agent activates the master dispatcher.

Abstract: An electronic form processing system preferably includes a host computer, a plurality of local computers, form definitions, routing definitions and an organizational hierarchy. Both the host and the local computers further include a central processing unit, a display device, an input device and addressable memory. The processing unit accesses information and instructions from the input device and memory to display forms, complete forms and route the completed forms within the hierarchy of users. With the display and input devices, the user inputs the necessary information to select and complete a form. The system creates a data file and electronically sends the data file to the proper recipients based on the form type and routing definition. The system also tracks the data file to assure that the initiator of the form receives a response.