Patent ID: 7398527

Claim:
A method for dispatching steps of at least one application running on an application server of a service portal in a client/server system of a distributed computing environment which can be accessed from client terminals connected to said service portal, comprising: receiving an input to interact with applications running on a remote application server by receiving an input selecting interaction elements on client terminals with the aid of a client program; transmitting interactions, from the client terminals to the application server executing a main part of an application; creating, at the application, output that contains the next set of possible interactions, and wherein first application steps can be addressed and invoked by second application steps in order to reuse software components necessary for processing said second application steps; nesting, at the application server, programming commands used to call at least one of said second application steps which serves as a called sub-routine within the first application step; returning, at the application server, values to the first application step; and discarding, at the application server, nesting paths of called application steps in a case of switching to another application.