A merchandising related method, apparatus and system which includes a product editor for providing product information for products, a classification editor to create hierarchies for the products, a distribution editor to assign distribution channels through which the products will be sold, a horizon editor to establish different time horizons for the sale of the products, and a line editor to provide line builds and produce line lists based on the information entered through the product editing...

A financial transaction processing system is disclosed, wherein substantial processing efficiencies are provided with, additionally, a substantial decrease in the size of the executable code. Each transaction processed by the transaction processing system is described by a transaction data descriptor that includes a series of subtransaction data descriptions of actions that can be performed independently of one another. Thus, complex transaction processing logic is substantially removed from the...

A system add method for controlling the execution or display to one or more pieces of software developed using the developer's software is provided. The system permits the developer to receive revenue for use of the software without inconveniencing the customer or the user. In more detail, the system has a customer site with one or more locations containing one or more assets wherein a master key is purchased by the customer from the developer that specifies the one or more locations on the site...

The present invention relates to a goods sales management system which communicates directly to customers via a communication line. The system manages the transmitting of merchandising notices for the goods to selected customers based on an arrival of goods that will satisfy a previous unsatisfied customer request and based on a customer purchase history. The system includes a customer utilization history memory storing history information indicating the use of the goods sales management apparat...

An Information Interface Provider (IIP) acting as the interface between a biller and its customers for both the presentment of electronic bills to the customers and for the processing of payments from the biller's customers. The IIP creates and electronically publishes bills to the biller's customers in response to data provided by the biller and processes the payments in response to instructions provided by the customers. Bill publication is accomplished by any and/or all channels of distributi...

The present invention provides a pushback FIFO architecture that enables a value that has been unloaded from the FIFO to be pushed back into the FIFO at the beginning of the data stream if a determination as made that the data value should not have been unloaded from the FIFO. Therefore, the pushed back data value will be the first data value unloaded from the FIFO on the following read cycle. Because the data value that should not have been unloaded is not lost, and is placed at the beginning o...

A method is provided for controlling an electronic apparatus, the electronic apparatus including a USB interface that is used for connecting a USB device of a first device class in a first operation mode controlled by a first control program. The method includes reading, upon connection of a USB device of a second device class different from the first device class to the USB interface, a second control program for controlling a second operation mode from the connected USB device; and starting th...

A method of predicting expected performance of a processing center system is provided. The method includes receiving performance information from a performance monitoring system associated with the processing center system. A computer model of the processing center system is developed based on the performance information. The method further includes generating predictions based on the computer model, and analyzing the predictions to generate performance scenarios for the processing center system...

A data processing system and method of using said data processing system for assessing and managing risk is disclosed. The preferred embodiment of the method includes the steps of identifying a set of risk elements; determining an importance for each said risk element; identifying any subrisks associated with said risk elements; identifying one ore more control procedures for each said subrisk element; assigning weights to each said control procedure; rating compliance with each said control pro...

A method and system for utility resource aggregation and allocation is disclosed. User data on utility resource use for a plurality of utility users is collected. Utility resource demand is modeled for an aggregation of a subset of the plurality of utility users. The aggregation of utility users are dynamically matched with a utility source or aggregated utility source.