Patent ID: 7373349

Claim:
A system for handling ecommerce requests, comprising: a processor; a plurality of applications, each configured to process requests in respective transformed formats, wherein each request is received from one of a plurality of requesting entities in respective original format and mapped to the respective transformed format, wherein each of the respective original formats is different from one another; at least one specification document containing metadata defining relationships between data of the requests in the respective original formats and data of the requests in the respective transformed formats, wherein the metadata comprises a plurality of metadata instances each of the metadata instances defining a mapping between one of the original formats and the respective transformed format of a respective request; and a flow manager which, when executed by the processor, is configured to, for each request, perform a process utilizing the metadata to convert the request in the original format to the transformed format, wherein the process comprises: identifying which application of the plurality of applications the metadata specifies for handling the request; invoking an access method specific to the identified application, the access method being defined by the metadata; retrieving, by the access method, a list of field elements that describe the inputs required by the identified application; for each input field element in the list, retrieving a corresponding value from the request in the original format; placing each retrieved value in a data structure having the transformed format; and invoking the identified application using an invocation method specific to the identified application and specified by the access method, whereby the application takes the data structure as input to perform the request.