Patent ID: 6854114

Claim:
A method for servicing requests received by a server in a multiple-user environment, the method comprising the steps of: establishing a first session between said server and a first user; establishing a second session between said server and a second user; responding to requests that are received by said server in said first session by executing virtual machine code using a first virtual machine instance; and responding to requests that are received by said server in said second session by executing virtual machine code using a second virtual machine instance; wherein said first virtual machine instance and said second virtual machine instance are distinct instances of a same type of virtual machine; wherein said first virtual machine instance exists within said server concurrently with said second virtual machine instance; wherein said first virtual machine instance and said second virtual machine instance are two of a plurality of virtual machine instances, associated with said server, that share access to data stored in a shared state area allocated in volatile memory associated with said server; wherein said plurality of virtual machine instances share read-only access to said data stored in said shared state area allocated in volatile memory within said server; and wherein establishing the first session between said server and the first user includes establishing a first database session between a database system and the first user; and establishing the second session between said server and the second user includes establishing a second database session between the database system and the first user.