Patent ID: 7359862

Claim:
A data processing system adapted to confront offers and demands for matching an offer to a demand, said data processing system being configured to: receive and store new requests corresponding to one of new offers and new demands, wherein the new requests are formulated by users of the data processing system; receive and store data corresponding to one of pending offers and pending demands from a plurality of secondary data processing servers, wherein the secondary data processing servers are each adapted to confront offers and demands to match an offer to a demand; and after receiving a new request corresponding to one of a new offer and a new demand formulated by a user of the data processing system, determine whether the new request matches one of the pending offers and the pending demands that originated from one of the secondary data processing servers or one of the users of the data processing system, wherein if no match is determined, the data processing system is further configured to perform at least one of: storing the new request in the data processing system; and sending data corresponding to the new request to at least one of the secondary data processing servers to enable confrontation of the new request with one of a subsequent offer and a subsequent demand subsequently received by the secondary data processing server to match the new request with one of the subsequent offer and the subsequent demand.