Patent ID: 8447808

Claim:
A method of requesting information from at least one server, comprising the steps of: a virtual presence server receiving a client query requesting presence information, said client query comprising a plurality of different attributes whose attribute values must be retrieved from presence information obtained from a plurality of different existing presentities and external information sources, and whose attribute values are used to compute a response to the client query, wherein the virtual presence server is an intermediate server that operates between clients and existing presence servers; the virtual presence server instantiating a set of software objects for creating a new virtual presentity, said set of software objects embodying logic to (i) retrieve presence information, which satisfies the plurality of different attributes of said client query, from the plurality of different existing presentities and external information sources, and to (ii) execute query compute logic on the attribute values to create information used to derive the response to the client query based on the retrieved presence information, said response to said client query being a new virtual presentity that is created by the virtual presence server; the virtual presence server creating an association between the client query and the new virtual presentity that is created, wherein said association allows the retrieved presence information to be propagated back to the client; associating a dynamic presentity uniform resource identifier (URI) to identify the new virtual presentity; causing the new virtual presentity to be published as a presence state for the dynamic presentity URI to at least one existing presence server; and redirecting the client to the dynamic presentity URI such that the client subscribes to the dynamic presentity URI and receives presence state information for the new virtual presentity from the at least one existing presence server.