Inheritance and relationship to directory information in an e-commerce application

A method for dynamically determining a set of relevant rule instances based on a set of received context attribute values comprising:

• determining an optimized set of rule instances for a hierarchically structured data store from rule instances within a directory server;
• determining a set of context values for a received context;
• determining a set of hierarchically relevant context values, based on the set of received context values;
• and
• determining a set of relevant optimized rule instances, based on the set of hierarchically relevant context attribute values.

A system for dynamically determining a set of relevant rule instances based on a set of context attribute values, comprising:

• means for having rule instances with hierarchical structure;
• means for having a hierarchical structure optimized to provide a set of hierarchically relevant context attribute values, based on the set of context attribute values;
• and
• means for to providing the set of context attribute values to the attribute data store means, and to determine the set of relevant rule instances, based on the hierarchically relevant context attribute values from the attribute data store.

A system for dynamically determining a set of relevant rule instances based on a set of received context attribute values, comprising:

• means for determining an optimized set of rule instances for a hierarchically structured data store from rule instances within a directory server;
• means for determining a set of context values for a received context;
• means for determining a set of hierarchically relevant context values, based on the set of received context values;
• and
• means for determining a set of relevant optimized rule instances, based on the set of hierarchically relevant context attribute values.

A computer program product comprising a computer useable medium having computer readable code embodied therein for dynamically determining a set of relevant rule instances based on a set of received context attribute values, the computer program product adapted when run on a computer to execute steps including:

• determining an optimized set of rule instances for a hierarchically structured data store from rule instances within a directory server;
• determining a set of context values for a received context;
• determining a set of hierarchically relevant context values, based on the set of received context values;
• and
• determining a set of relevant optimized rule instances, based on the set of hierarchically relevant context attribute values.