Abstract: A system is disclosed for establishing an interconnection between trading networks. The system receives an access establishment request communicated from a home user subscribed to a home trading network and not subscribed to a foreign trading network, the access establishment request including a request to access a desired application, the desired application associated with the foreign trading network. The system further communicates the access establishment request to a foreign operator computer system and receives an approval of the access establishment request communicated from the foreign operator computer system.

Abstract: A method for displaying values specified in a number of offers for a number of offer variables with respect to price includes receiving data for multiple offers that reflects values specified in the offers for multiple offer variables and generating a display of the received data. The display includes multiple offer variable windows that are each associated with an offer variable. Each offer variable window includes an offer price axis representing a range of offer prices and an offer variable axis substantially perpendicular to the offer price axis that represents a range of values for the offer variable associated with the offer variable window. Each offer variable window includes multiple bars. Each bar represents a value specified in offers for the offer variable associated with the offer variable window and is positioned with respect to the offer price axis according to an offer price specified in the offers.

Abstract: A system and method for distributing consumer demand upstream in a supply chain is disclosed. The system receives, at a current time, an indication of consumer demand for a product that a consumer, associated with a consumer order management system, may be willing to receive at a future date rather than the current date in exchange for an incentive. The system also determines a particular incentive based on an order lead time for the product and conveys the particular incentive to the consumer order management system to determine whether to receive the product at the particular future date rather than the current date in exchange for the particular incentive. The consumer order management system communicates an order for the product to an upstream supply chain entity, such that, the consumer receives the product at the particular future date rather than the current date in exchange for the particular incentive.

Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for allocating products to one or more sellers. The system includes a database operable to store data associated with one or more enterprises. The system further includes an order promising system coupled with the database and operable to model the flow of the products through the one or more enterprises and allocate resources to the one or more sellers based on the modeled flow of the products.

Abstract: A system providing seller pre-qualification during the matching phase of an electronic commerce transaction includes a directory structure comprising multiple hierarchically organized product classes, each product class categorizing multiple products and defining one or more attributes of the products categorized in the product class. The system also includes one or more pointers for each product class, each pointer identifying a seller database in which product data enabling a product transaction is stored for products categorized in the product class. The system further includes a search interface configured to communicate a search query for product data only to one or more seller databases associated with sellers having seller attribute values matching the specified seller attribute criteria, these seller databases being identified by the one or more pointers associated with the selected product class.

Abstract: A system, computer-implemented method, and software for automatically planning and scheduling ocean-going vessels for oil distribution is provided. The scheduling of the vessels is based on a filtered beam search and greedy heuristic. A server can be used for receiving a schedule request and one or more constraints for scheduling one or more vessels from one or more users. An optimization engine can be used for generating a schedule based at least in part on the one or more constraints using a beam search algorithm.