Adaptive profiling framework and system for service provisioning in e-business solutions

Effective profiling of consumer and service information is critical to today's e-business solutions. Typically, each service has its individual profiling requirements in addition to the basic profiling requirements common to all services. The challenge is to build a flexible profiling system to dynamically collect relevant consumer data and accommodate a variety of profiling requirements of different services. To address this challenge, this paper introduces a two-phase profiling framework based on a service hub that provides the infrastructure for service hosting, aggregation, and provisioning. The profiling framework supports two profiling mechanisms, namely Delegated Profiling and Punchout Profiling. Using the proposed Data Driven Dynamic Form, the Delegated Profiling enables a cost-effective way to collect service specific information from a consumer beyond the basic profiling requirements. Punchout Profiling enables seamless integration between an individual service's profiling system and the service hub through the use of the Profiling Punchout Protocol. © 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.