Method and system for providing interactive electronic catalog for product and constraint information of equality and inequality search

A method for providing electronic catalog searching for product information stored in an on-line computer database, in response to user input at a computer display, comprising the steps of:

• indexing said product information by at least one product feature;
• generating product constraint information about said product information, said product constraint information comprising at least one product feature value;
• storing said product information and said constraint information at said computer database;
• selectively retrieving constraint information in response to user input;
• dynamically generating a display of said retrieved constraint information comprising product feature value variables and of an image file comprising graphical representations of each of a plurality of search parameters, said graphical representations comprising representations of each of the equality and inequality symbols comprising equal to, not equal to, greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, and less than or equal to for use by a user to select the range of product feature value variables to be searched;
• displaying said display of retrieved constraint information and of said image file for user selection;
• receiving user selection input to said display of said image file comprising selection of one of said graphical representations for each of said at least one product feature;
• and
• selectively retrieving product information based upon said user selection input.

A system for providing electronic catalog searching for product information stored in an on-line computer database, in response to user input at a computer display comprising the steps of:

• means for indexing said product information by at least one product feature;
• means for generating product constraint information about said product information, said product constraint information comprising at least one product feature value;
• means for generating display information for said product and constraint information and for rendering said display information as a plurality of display tags, at least one for each product;
• means for storing said product and said constraint information and display tags at said computer database;
• means for processing said stored information for dynamically generating an image file comprising graphical representations of each of a plurality of search parameters for display with said product and constraint information, said graphical representations comprising representations of each of the equality and inequality symbols comprising equal to, not equal to, greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, and less than or equal to for use by a user to select one of said graphical representations for each of said at least product feature to identify the range of product feature value variables to be searched;
• means for receiving user selection input to said display of said image file comprising selection of one of said graphical representations for each of said at least one product features;
• and
• means for searching said database based on said user selection input and for providing search results for display to said user.