Abstract: A model for implementing a syndicated marketplace service is provided by an architecture that applies a payment instrumentation process to syndicated items, including advertising, classified listings, marketplace catalogs and the like, to expose such items as transaction-able in a virtual marketplace. The syndicated items are presented, as transactional advertisements or listings, through binding to transaction functionalities provided by user interface (“UI”) gadgets. The UI gadgets provide targeted and contextual handling of the instrumented transactional advertisements or listings when implemented at a particular site. The model enables web site publishers to readily syndicate the necessary services to offer products and services that are targeted, for example by location, time, or audience demographic, and which may be closely related to themes, content, and information presented on the publisher's sites.

Abstract: A system and method for a reporting information service using metadata to communicate with databases and a user interface. The invention includes software in a data access component, a report component, and a user interface component for populating, maintaining, and dispatching reports responsive to user requests for the reports via metadata. The data access component provides a logical view of data in a database via data access metadata. The report component populates, maintains, and dispatches reports via report metadata characterizing the reports. The user interface component renders the report dispatched from the report component via user interface metadata specifying rendering attributes for the report.

Abstract: A database architecture and method for processing data in a multidimensional database, including performing Web usage analysis. A summary cube contains the members of an upper level of a dimension and a detail cube contains a subset of the members of a lower level of the dimension partitioned therefrom based on a selected member of the upper level of the dimension. The detail cube also includes one or more sub-cubes containing aggregations of the first subset of the lower level members. An XML template implements a workflow to automatically create a second detail cube partitioned from the dimension based on another selected member of the upper level. Using XML metadata, the invention implements zoom in/zoom out events to navigate between information in the summary cube and information in the detail cubes.