Patent ID: 8250086

Claim:
A method of providing two or more enterprise applications with shared access to a data warehouse, the method comprising: issuing a web service request over a data network from a first client enterprise application to a second server enterprise application; processing the web service request at the second server enterprise application; constructing a database query at the second server enterprise application in response to the web server request; determining whether a response to the web service will include the results of posing the database query against the data warehouse or database query syntax necessary to pose the query against the data warehouse; if the response to the web service is to include the results of posing the database query against the data warehouse then: the second server enterprise application posing the constructed query against the data warehouse; the second server enterprise application obtaining the results of the query; the second server enterprise application formatting the results of the query for issuing to the first client enterprise application over the data network; issuing the results of the query to the first client enterprise application as a response to the web service request; if the response to the web service is to include the database query syntax necessary to pose the query against the data warehouse then: the second server enterprise application issuing the database query syntax to the first client enterprise application as a response to the web service request.