Improving the Online Shopping Experience with XML

August 11, 1998

The Business Problem
The Role of XML
Solving the Problem with the Junglee Shopping Guide and XML
   Situation Overview
   User Scenario
   Behind the Curtain
XML Example
Information Flow Diagram

The Business Problem

Today, a Web shopper who desires to purchase a particular product is faced with many challenges. He must know the names of appropriate online merchant Web sites, enter each individually, know how to conduct his search, compile the results, and then somehow compare all of the results to determine where to make the purchase. Every Web site has a separate structure and vocabulary, making it difficult to quickly evaluate the search results. Due to the limitations of HTML, the shopper's search may produce too much or too little information or even completely different results from different merchant sites. All of these factors can make today's Web shopping experience frustrating and inefficient. Thus, a shopping guide that allows online shoppers to search and compare across multiple merchants is required.

The Role of XML

HTML codes text for visual presentation: bold, italic, and indented, for example. HTML also has a simple concept of structure: a heading, a paragraph, or a list. But HTML cannot assign semantics to specific information, such as "author", "price", or "title", nor can it provide consistency of structure. XML solves this problem with an extensive set of coding tags for identifying specific information within text.

Solving the Problem with the Junglee Shopping Guide and XML

Situation Overview

This scenario illustrates the power of XML by transforming the Internet into a database. Data is collected from Web sites based on the user query, and structured into a standard representation for each category. The search results are encoded in XML, using a uniform document type definition (DTD) across all sites, regardless of the original format of the information (typically HTML).

The scenario presents a highly configurable comparison shopping service that can aggregate dozens of merchant Web sites across a wide range of product categories, consolidating them into a single shopping guide. The shopping guide automatically searches the Web sites of a variety of online book merchants. The results are instantly displayed in an easy-to-understand table. This table provides the customer with information from each vendor that carries the desired book, and a "detail" button supplies a "pop-up" window that provides details such as price, format, and availability. From this table, the shopper can decide where to make his purchase and can then do so by clicking an Order button that takes him to the merchant order site.

User Scenario

Jean Pierre is a Web shopper looking for the best deal on the book "Eiger Dreams" by author Jon Krakauer. Using a channel to an online shopping guide, he initiates a search by entering the title "Eiger Dreams" or the author's name, or both, in the search criteria boxes presented on the search form. The results of his search include a list of the merchants participating in the shopping guide that carry "Eiger Dreams". Jean Pierre can click a "detail" button next to each merchant to get a pop-up window that supplies more information about the deal that merchant is offering, including price, availability, format (hardback, paperback, audio cassette), and shipping specifics. Once Jean Pierre has examined all of the information presented by each merchant in the details window, he can make a purchase decision, click on a "buy now" button, and be taken to the selected merchant's order page to order the book.

Behind the Curtain

Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0 or later is required for this application.
The Web server shopping guide application is built by Junglee (http://www.junglee.com/ ) with information supplied by the merchant.
The standard HTML search form is generated by Junglee's Virtual Database (VDB) server and delivered via HTTP to Internet Explorer. The information presented in this pop-up window is predetermined by Junglee and the merchants of a particular type of product -- in this case, books.
Internet Explorer submits an HTTP request to the shopping guide application Web server. This request is converted into an SQL query, which is then issued to the VDB server. The shopping guide application is created by Junglee with input from the appropriate merchants.
For example, the following SQL query is generated as a result of Jean Pierre's search:
```
SELECT *
FROM books
WHERE books.author = "krakauer"
and books.title = "eiger dreams"
```
The VDB server searches the Web site of each participating merchant and collects the relevant HTML data from the merchant's database about "Eiger Dreams". Using text processing and artificial intelligence technology developed by Junglee, the VDB server converts the HTML data into XML data.
The VDB server then feeds the XML data back to the Web server, which in turn delivers the data to Internet Explorer, where it is cached locally in an XML data source object (DSO). The data is rendered in the browser using the table binding feature of the DSO, and using DHTML to produce the pop-up detail window. The data can be viewed in several ways (for example, grouped by author and title, sorted by price, etc.) via scripts on the client. Since the data is cached at the browser level in the XML DSO, the browser never needs to reinitiate the search to the Web server, saving time for Jean Pierre. The data is cached at the browser level as long as the query is active.

XML Example

The following XML code fragment is from a books search.

======================================
<?xml version "1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE booklist SYSTEM "book.dtd">
<Booklist>
<Book>
     <Title>Eiger Dreams</Title>
    <Author>Krakauer, Jon</Author>
 <Deal>
  <Merchant>Amazon.com</Merchant>
  <Format>Paperback</Format>
  <Price>$10.36</Price>
  <Availability>Ships in 1 day</Availability>
 </Deal>

 <Deal>
           <Merchant>A1books</Merchant>
  <Format>paperback</Format>
  <Price>$10.00</Price>
  <Availability>2-3 days</Availability>
 </Deal>
 <Deal>
  <Merchant>A1books</Merchant>
  <Format>audio</Format>
  <Price>$17.50</Price>
  <Availability>2-3 days</Availability>
 </Deal>
 <Deal>
            <Merchant>All Direct</Merchant>
   <Format>paperback</Format>
  <Price>$9.71</Price>
  <Availability>2-3 days</Availability>
  </Deal>
</Book>
</Booklist>