Patent ID: 7937703

Claim:
A method for processing a batch request through a web service on a server, the method comprising: processing a batch request from a client through the web service, the batch request including a plurality of sub-requests that each specify an operation to be performed by the web service, the processing including performing the operation specified by each of the plurality of sub-requests and generating a corresponding plurality of sub-replies, wherein a first sub-request of the plurality of sub-requests includes a storage attribute indicating that result data of processing the first sub-request should be stored in a temporary buffer, and wherein a second sub-request of the plurality of sub-requests includes an input attribute indicating that the result data should be used as input to the second sub-request; creating the temporary buffer on the server; storing the result data of processing the first sub-request in the temporary buffer on the server; transforming the result data in the temporary buffer on the server into a form suitable for input to the second sub-request, wherein transforming the result data retrieved from the temporary buffer on the server into a form suitable for input to the second sub-request includes transforming the result data using an XSLT transformation; retrieving the transformed result data stored in the temporary buffer on the server; passing the transformed result data as input to the second sub-request when processing the second sub-request to generate a second sub-reply, the second sub-reply corresponding to the processing of the second sub-request; constructing a batch reply including the plurality of sub-replies; providing the batch reply to the client; and clearing the temporary buffer of the result data when the batch reply is returned to the client to ensure that state is maintained on a per request basis.