An Interoperable Multimedia Catalog System for Electronic Commerce

We describe our work in developing interoperable smart and virtual catalogs for electronic commerce which incorporate full multimedia capabilities. Smart catalogs enable querying of their content. The underlying assumption of our work is that future catalogs that will be used in electronic commerce will have two characteristics: (a) they will not only contain text and (perhaps) images, but will contain full multimedia capabilities including audio and video, and (b) these catalogs will not be monolithic, consisting of storage in a single database management system (DBMS), but will be distributed involving a number of different types of data storage systems. The general approach incorporates multimedia data management capabilities and interoperability techniques for the development of distributed information systems. This work is part of a larger project on electronic commerce infrastructure involving multiple universities and companies in Canada.