An inventive procurement system includes a requisition system for special item
purchases that are not found when searching a catalog database. Using the requisition
system the buyer is provided with the desired item while the information associated
with the requisition is selectively added to a rule-based knowledge base as well
as to an item database. In a preferred embodiment a common language generator has
been used to normalize free form data using pre-determined rules to place the data
into a class/attribute/value relationship. By having the item requisition follow
the same relationship, the pre-determined rules may be updated and the free-form
data associated with the item properly coded for inclusion into an item database.
