Patent ID: 7761535

Claim:
A method, comprising: coupling a handheld device to a server, the server comprising a first database and the handheld device comprising a second database, the handheld device also comprising an application that allows a user to access the second database; determining whether the application needs to be updated, wherein the determining comprises an act of comparing a version number of the application with a version number received from the server; causing the server to provide to the handheld device metadata for updating the application if the application version number and the version number received from the server do not compare equally; causing the handheld device to record transactions performed on the second database by a user; causing the handheld device to provide to the server transaction information, wherein the transaction information is related to the recorded transactions; causing the server to perform a transaction on the first database based on the transaction information; causing the server to extract data from the first database to be used to update the second database; and causing the server to provide to the handheld device at least a portion of the extracted data.