Patent ID: 8397057

Claim:
A method of accessing an application server, the method comprising: at an application-independent generic hub, receiving a request from an external system to access application data stored in the application server, the request conforming to a first transfer protocol; responsive to said receiving, verifying authorization of the external system to access the application server; deriving, for input data in a data field of a user interface, an expected data type and a corresponding field length for the data field from metadata provided by a backend server's data dictionary; if the external system is authorized, validating the input data by: determining data type and field length of the input data, comparing the determined data type and field length to the expected data type and corresponding field length, and discarding extraneous data from the input data when the field length of the input data exceeds the corresponding field length, wherein the extraneous data comprises data characters that are in excess of the corresponding field length; and responsive to said validating, tunneling the request of the first transfer protocol in a second transfer protocol to the application server, wherein the request includes the input data.