Patent ID: 7711857

Claim:
A method in a computer system for processing packets of a message, the method comprising: receiving a packet of the message and a data type of the message; analyzing the data type of a first packet of the message to dynamically identify a sequence of components for processing a plurality of packets of the message such that the output format of the components of the sequence match the input format of the next component in the sequence, wherein analyzing the data type of the first packet of the message to dynamically identify the sequence of components includes selecting individual components to form the sequence of components after the first packet of the message is received; storing an indication of each of the identified components so that the sequence does not need to be re-identified for subsequent packets of the message; for each of a plurality of components in the identified sequence: performing the processing of each packet by the identified component; and storing state information relating to the processing of the component with the packet for use when processing the next packet of the message.