A business application integrates a company's internal business systems with
an
e-commerce web site, so that company personnel can manage their business with a
business application that seamlessly exports relevant, up-to-date data to a web
site designed to interact with customers across the Web. The business application
provides business functions for manipulating merchandising data stored in a merchandising
database. In addition, to accommodate an intermittent connection to the Internet
or otherwise to the web hosting server, the business application supports the generation
of a replica, from the merchandising database, that can be exported to a web hosting
server. A web application executing at the web hosting server generates web pages
based on merchandising data stored in the partial replica. The customer can provide
feedback, possibly representing purchase orders or customer information changes,
for example, that can be automatically entered into the company's business system.
Alternatively, the customer can download a client replica, generated from the partial
replica at the web hosting server, for use during periods of disconnection from
the web hosting server. Thereafter, the client replica and the partial replica
can be synchronized to update each other with modified data. Furthermore, the partial
replica and the merchandising database can also be synchronized.
