Patent ID: 8666804

Claim:
A method of using an agent computer system to obtain information from multiple service-provider computer systems, the method comprising: in response to receiving search criteria at the agent computer system from a client computer system, determining one or more service-provider computer systems with which to communicate to obtain information satisfying the search criteria; determining, for each of said one or more service-provider computer systems, a communication protocol to use to communicate with the service-provider computer system to obtain information satisfying the search criteria; transmitting from the agent computer system to each of said one or more service-provider computer systems, using the communication protocol determined to be used with each service-provider computer system, a request to obtain information satisfying the search criteria, wherein said one or more service-provider computer systems are configured to, in response to receiving the request, generate a response to the request; and receiving at the agent computer system from each of said one or more service-provider computer systems the response to the request.