Schema Evolution publication categorizer

Internet marketplaces are now faced with new
challenges that arise from the need to seamlessly
integrate enormous number of product catalogs from
different sources. In order to help users find products
efficiently, Internet shops provide hierarchies of product
catalogs (called category hierarchies). However, the
absence of robust models (and well understood
semantics) for product catalogs and their hierarchies
severely impairs our ability to systematically support
structured operations.
In this paper, we present an extended catalog model
whose purpose is to provide a universal product catalog
repository with browsing, searching, and downloading
capabilities in order to facilitate catalog sharing and
interoperability. In addition, we present a model for
category hierarchies with well defined semantics which
allows flexible representation of product hierarchies as
well as automatic merging of different category
hierarchies as a special case of catalog integration.