Abstract: An electronic commerce system allows trading partners to automatically configure a trading relationship for network-based business exchanges. The system has a first computer system at a first trading partner and a second computer system at a second trading partner. The computer systems are interconnected via a network, such as the Internet. The trading relationship governs how the trading partners' computer systems connect to one another and communicate over the network. The automated configuration process involves two phases. In a first phase, each of the trading partners enters all of its own configuration details and publishes that information to a URL (universal resource locator) at a Web site (hosted by the trading partner, or elsewhere). In a second phase, one of the trading partners attempts to forge a trading relationship with a potential trading partner by entering the URL for the potential trading partner's configuration details and pulling the details down from the Web site.

Abstract: Arithmetic coding and decoding, and compressing and decompressing methods and systems are described. In one embodiment, occurrence values are calculated that represent the number of times individual component values appear in an input stream that is to be encoded. The occurrence values are first normalized to ensure that they are all powers of 2. The occurrence values are then second normalized to ensure that the sum of all of the occurrence values is a power of 2. After normalization, encoding or compressing takes place through arithmetic techniques that utilize a range having a length equal to the normalized sum of the occurrence values. Various sub-ranges within the range are assigned to individual component values that are to be encoded. A position is defined within the range and a determination is made as to whether the position is within a sub-range that is necessary to encode an individual component value.

Abstract: An extensible, bi-directional function calling protocol tunnels function call requests and responses through the HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol) message stream of a standard Web browser and a standard Web server. In a preferred embodiment, the protocol is used to exchange information between an electronic commerce client application ("commerce client") which runs on the computer of a World Wide Web user, and an electronic commerce server application ("commerce server") which runs on a Web site. The protocol specifies a format for embedding a generic client-to-server function call within HTML (HyperText Markup Language) content such that a user can initiate the function call while viewing an HTML document via the standard Web browser. Specialized functions such as "get price," "get inventory," and "calculate tax" can thereby be placed within standard Web documents, such as electronic catalog documents used by online merchants to sell products.

Abstract: A function calling protocol and methodology allow local function calls to be embedded within HTML documents, using standard HTML (HyperText Markup Language) tags, such that a user can selectively initiate the function calls while viewing the documents with a standard World Wide Web ("Web") browser. User-invocable functions are thereby added to Web documents without modification to either existing Web browsers or HTML. In accordance with the invention, when a user initiates a local function call (by clicking on a button or other content item from within the Web browser), an HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) POST message which contains the information for making the function call is generated by the standard Web browser. This message is routed from the Web browser to an application (which runs on the same computer as the browser) using a conventional Local Host service of the computer's TCP/IP stack. The application then uses the function-calling information to make the function call on the computer.

Abstract: A computerized, electronic purchase mediating system includes a purchaser database having a list of purchasers and a merchant database having a list of merchants. The purchaser database stores information about each purchaser including a set of personal payment methods that the purchaser could use to purchase goods and/or services. Similarly, the merchant database stores information about each merchant including a set of accepted payment methods that the merchant would accept for sale of the goods and/or services. The purchase system also includes a processor coupled to the purchaser and merchant databases. The processor receives a purchase request and accesses the merchant database according to a merchant identified in the purchase request to retrieve the set of accepted payment methods which corresponds to that merchant. The processor also accesses the purchaser database to retrieve the set of personal payment methods which corresponds to the identified purchaser.