Patent ID: 7693185

Claim:
A method for creation and management of intelligent, self-contained packets containing all control flow, logic, governance criteria and instructions, the method comprising the steps of: recognizing a trigger event that initiates a process; correlating the triggering event to a packet of a predetermined type having instructions contained in the packet to execute at least one service; loading the packet into a packet interpreter; determining the presence of a control-flow language in the packet that governs sequence and logic for the at least one service; invoking a first service referenced in the packet by: reading any governance criteria in the packet associated with the first service to determine if any portions of a result generated by the first service require limitation, restriction, modification, or redirection; retrieving instructions for the first service from the packet; determining whether governance permits performance of the retrieved instructions for the first service; performing any permitted instructions for the first service using embedded control language and logic to generate a result in accordance with any governance criteria; optionally validating the result; optionally transforming the result to a predetermined format; and forwarding the validated result to a consumer of the result generated by service portions of which result may be redacted based on governance criteria; invoking any subsequent services referenced in the packet in accordance with the control-flow language contained in the packet and repeating the steps of reading, retrieving, determining, performing, validating, transforming, and forwarding until all services have been invoked; archiving the packet populated with results of the services invoked in a data store; and indexing the packet for subsequent retrieval.