Abstract: An electronic shopping system recommending recipes and creating shopping lists. A user selects items for purchase and proceeds to a point-of-sale terminal for checkout. The point-of-sale terminal transmits information of the purchased items to a network computer which uses the information to update a taste profile for the user. Based on the taste profile, the network computer recommends recipes that may be prepared using the items just purchased. The network computer also creates the user's meal plan for the week based on the user's taste profile, and provides the meal plan along with a shopping list.

Abstract: A system and method for creating and submitting for a user an electronic shopping list. The system presents to the user a meal list and a shopping list of ingredients contained in the meal list. The meals are preferably selected based on the food preferences of the user. The user accepts the meal list and the shopping list, causing an order request with the ingredients to be automatically created and submitted to a retailer. The user may alternatively decide to manually exclude certain ingredients in the list that the user has already purchased prior to accepting the shopping list. The exclusion may also be automatic based on past purchase information contained in the user's home inventory database. The retailer fulfills the order and delivers the ingredients to the user based on a pre-determined delivery time.

Abstract: A method and system for dynamically invoking and/or checking conditions of a computer test program. Test cases that verify class/component functionality are automatically created from the DbC contracts. When the classes/components that contain DbC contracts are added to the system, the invention automatically verifies whether the system uses them correctly. The information in the contract comments is used to generate more comprehensive and better quality test cases. In one embodiment, a code's specification information is analyzed and a class with extra bytecodes that describe how the class is supposed to work and be used is generated. Next, the instrumented class is integrated into the system, and the system is run. The system is monitored as it runs and contract violations are automatically detected.

Abstract: A method and system for dynamically invoking and/or checking conditions of a computer test program. Test cases that verify class/component functionality are automatically created from the DbC contracts. When the classes/components that contain DbC contracts are added to the system, the invention automatically verifies whether the system uses them correctly. The information in the contract continents is used to generate more comprehensive and better quality test cases. In one embodiment, a code's specification information is analyzed and a class with extra bytecodes that describe how the class is supposed to work and be used is generated. Next, the instrumented class is integrated into the system, and the system is run. The system is monitored as it runs and contract violations are automatically detected.

Abstract: A method and system for enforcing functionality in computer software through policy including converting a natural language policy to sample code, wherein the natural language policy is represented by logical patterns; creating one or more static analysis rules from the sample code to enforce the natural language policy at a centralized location of the computer software; and enforcing the created one or more static analysis rules for the computer software.

Abstract: The present invention is a module testing tool for Web services. In one embodiment, the present invention automates the testing of Web services that use SOAP as a wire protocol and HTTP as a transport protocol. The invention provides an easy interface for exercising Web services and testing their functionality. The invention helps users confirm the responses to SOAP messages with such features as fault detection, textual comparisons, XML validation by DTDs or XML Schemas, and the ability to express and flag complex patterns in XML. The invention lets the users validate responses that require application-specific verification (such as business logic validation) by plugging in their own code. It also provides the capability to perform regression testing of web services. The invention can automatically creates regression test controls from SOAP Client responses, or users can create their own regression tests.

Abstract: A system and method for collecting and correlating information about development of a computer software, including software tools reports. The system and method provides overview of entire software development lifecycle, provides decision support engine for project management, allows estimation of project timelines based upon empirical data, allows evaluation of project quality based upon empirical data, and correlates information from previous projects to estimate progress of current project (confidence factors). The system and method for collecting and correlating information about development of a computer software include collecting data from a plurality of software tools during each point in lifecycle of the computer software; storing the collected data in a database; and correlating the stored collected data to monitor the development of the computer software.

Abstract: A method for predicting memory leak in a computer program. The method includes acquiring a reference to a tested unit included in the computer program for preventing static data objects from being deallocated; repeatedly executing the tested unit for more than once; tracking which objects in the tested unit are allocated in a corresponding executing time; performing garbage collection; tracking which objects are deallocated during the garbage collection; comparing the object allocations to the object deallocations; and determining if every execution of the tested unit allocates memory that cannot be deallocated.

Abstract: The present invention is a module testing tool for Web services. In one embodiment, the present invention automates the testing of Web services that use SOAP as a wire protocol and HTTP as a transport protocol. The invention provides an easy interface for exercising Web services and testing their functionality. The invention helps users confirm the responses to SOAP messages with such features as fault detection, textual comparisons, XML validation by DTDs or XML Schemas, and the ability to express and flag complex patterns in XML. The invention lets the users validate responses that require application-specific verification (such as business logic validation) by plugging in their own code. It also provides the capability to perform regression testing of web services. The invention can automatically creates regression test controls from SOAP Client responses, or users can create their own regression tests.

Abstract: A computer system representing user preferences in an N-dimensional preference topography and making recommendations based on such topography. The preference topography depicts user ratings of products in a recommendation database. Each product is represented by a product vector associated with N objectively measurable characteristics. The user rating of a product, therefore, represents the user's preference for the particular combination of the N objectively measurable characteristics making up the product. In making a recommendation of products to the user, the system assigns a rating to each product in the recommendation database based on the preference topography. The system then selects a plurality of maximally unique choices from the rated products for recommendation to the user. These maximally unique choices are calculated to be as diverse from one another as possible but still to the user's liking.

Abstract: A computer system representing user preferences in an N-dimensional preference topography and making recommendations based on such topography. The preference topography depicts user ratings of products in a recommendation database. Each product is represented by a product vector associated with N objectively measurable characteristics. The user rating of a product, therefore, represents the user's preference for the particular combination of the N objectively measurable characteristics making up the product. In making a recommendation of products to the user, the system assigns a rating to each product in the recommendation database based on the preference topography. The system then selects a plurality of maximally unique choices from the rated products for recommendation to the user. These maximally unique choices are calculated to be as diverse from one another as possible but still to the user's liking.

Abstract: A system and method for facilitating and simplifying testing and debugging of computer programs. is described A computer program is broken down to smaller components, such as, classes, functions, or objects, and then those smaller components are tested individually. Accordingly, specific aspects of the computer program can be effectively tested. The user can automatically perform a range of tests on a class or method when the class or method is compiled without integrating the class or method into a larger project.

Abstract: In one embodiment, the present invention is a method for automatically preventing errors in computer software. The method includes storing the computer software in a code repository; executing a plurality of software verification tools to verify the computer software, wherein each of the plurality of software verification tools automatically generates one or more test cases; generating verification results responsive to executing the plurality of software verification tools and the automatically generated test cases; processing the verification results for generating an objective criterion of quality of the computer software; and customizing the scope of one or more of the plurality of verification tools responsive to the objective criterion of quality of the computer software.

Abstract: The present invention is a method and system for dynamically invoking and/or checking conditions of a computer test program. In one embodiment, from the DbC contracts, the present invention automatically creates test cases that verify class/component functionality. When the classes/components that contain DbC contracts are added to the system, the present invention automatically verifies whether the system uses them correctly. The invention uses the information in the DbC comments to generate more comprehensive and better quality test cases.