ORDERING ITEMS USING CATALOGS WHEREIN THE USER QUERIES A CENTRAL CATALOG AND IS LINKED SUPPLIER CATALOGS

摘要

Method and apparatus are disclosed for ordering items using electronic catalogs including providing to buyers (404) index information (408) and directions (Step 3) to distributed supplier information which identifies goods and services of suppliers (402b) and providing ordering services (Step 6) to buyers and sellers by means of a global computer information network including transaction routing, multiple protocol support for exchanging content and transaction information and for converting an order into the suppliers' preferred protocol. An index to the items in the catalogs on a supplier computer system is stored on a public computer system (408) for generating a pointer (Step 3) for a customer to catalog information on the supplier computer system and then ordering a desired item (Step 6) from the public computer system in response to an order to the public computer system from the customer computer system.