Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates interacting with a user through a user proxy server. During operation, the system receives a request to interact with the user, wherein the request is received at a user proxy server, which services requests for interactions with users. This request specifies data or data types involved in the user interaction, as well as the purpose of the user interaction, but does not specify details of how the user interaction takes place. In response to this request, the system interacts with the user in a manner which is consistent with context information associated with the user.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates interacting with a user through a user proxy server. During operation, the system receives a request to interact with the user, wherein the request is received at a user proxy server, which services requests for interactions with users. This request specifies data or data types involved in the user interaction, as well as the purpose of the user interaction, but does not specify details of how the user interaction takes place. In response to this request, the system interacts with the user in a manner which is consistent with context information associated with the user.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for producing personalized web site content to be presented to a user of a content provider web site based upon information gathered regarding the user. The system operates by receiving data sent from a remote browser to a personalization server. This data is sent by a web page on the remote browser and includes an identifier for the user. This web page was previously sent from the content provider web site to the remote browser while the remote browser was navigating through the content provider web site. The personalization server uses the identifier to look up information related to the user in a database associated with the personalization server. This information is used to produce personalized web site content for the user based upon the interests of the user. For example, personalized web site content can include hypertext markup language (HTML) code, images or navigational options to other web locations.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for making predictions about data records from an incoming stream of data records. This system operates by discovering predictive relationships in an online manner between fields in records in the incoming stream of data records as the incoming stream of data records is received. These predictive relationships can used to predict values in fields based on other field values in the same record. This facilitates cleansing of data by allowing transaction values to be validated based upon predictions made from other field values in the same transaction record. It also allows missing field values to be predicted based upon the other field values. A variation of this embodiment provides for filtering transaction records based upon discovered predictive relationships and routing the transaction records to other servers in real-time.