Patent ID: 7383222

Claim:
A method of routing an order, comprising: receiving a selection of an order handling program from a set of predefined order handling programs, wherein the order handling programs are software programs that exist independently and are separately executable on a platform comprised of a computer system, executing the order handling program on the platform, wherein the order handling program is configured with an order that includes a set of conditional rules and corresponding actions to be taken when conditions in the conditional rules are met, the order identifying an item for a trade, building an action list for the order in accordance with the set of conditional rules, the building being performed by the order handling program and the action list including those actions whose conditions in the set of conditional rules have been met, and classifying each action in the action list according to recipient of the action, wherein: when the recipient of the action is a service umpire that is separately executing on the platform, the action must be one of a plurality of actions specified by the service umpire and processing of the action is directed to the service umpire; or when the recipient of the action is an order room that originated the order, processing of the action includes sending a message to the order room to provide order-related information; or when the recipient of the action is the platform, processing of the action includes sending a message to the platform to perform a requested service; or when the recipient of the action is an order umpire providing a market for the item in the order, the order is routed to the order umpire for processing the action, the order umpire being one of a plurality of order umpires that are each separately executing on the platform to provide a market for trading one or more items, and the routing being performed by the order handling program.