Applying profile views to bridge between different personalisation architectures

Abstract

User profiles are typically stored locally within proprietary personalisation architectures at service providers. Replicating the same information of the user profile, e.g. email address, across multiple independent service providers decreases consistency of user profiles. Centralising or exchange profile information increases consistency of profiles. Law issues, company policies and proprietary profile structures prevent successful profile exchange between service providers. Existing solutions for centralised profile storage like Microsoft Passport or Liberty Alliance are limited to specific information in the user's profile, e.g. authentication information. This paper presents a profile architecture to keep the user's profile in his domain. Service providers access the user profile by defined translations between the service providers profile structure and the user's profile structure. The translations defined are adaptable to reflect modifications in the different profile structures, e.g. Amazon, eBay etc.