Patent ID: 7509395

Claim:
A computing device comprising: a receiver and transmitter, the receiver being arranged to receive a plurality of data requests from a plurality of data-receiving applications, and also to receive data from a store, wherein said plurality of data-receiving applications include a group identity in said plurality of data requests, thus indicating that said plurality of data requests form a request group, and the transmitter being arranged to transmit data to said store and to transmit received-data received from said store to said data-receiving applications, further, said computing device being arranged to: process data requests received by said receiver from said data-receiving applications, identify said received data requests as belonging to the group by reading the group identity from the data requests, evaluate said data requests, said evaluation campuses one of the following: i. stalling said single request until all requests within a request group have been received; ii. sending said single request on receipt of the first request within a request group; iii. merging data-requests received from said data-receiving applications such that said single request comprises a consolidated request; and iv. monitoring requests within a request group and transmitting said single request when the processor has received sufficient data from said data-request to create said single request, produce a single request for the data requests within said request group and generated by said evaluation, and cause said transmitter to transmit said single request to said data-store and further to receive data from said data-store, process said received-data and to transmit said received data, or portions thereof, to at least one of said data-receiving applications.