Patent ID: 8774845

Claim:
A server system implemented using one or more data processing devices, the server system comprising: a communications interface configured to receive incoming requests for data; a request processor arranged to obtain the incoming requests from the communications interface and process the incoming requests, the processing including parsing received user agent strings included in the incoming requests; memory configured to store a plurality of predefined user agent strings and a plurality of predefined presentation capabilities of client devices that use the plurality of predefined user agent strings, the memory organized in a hierarchical arrangement that includes: a plurality of user agent nodes that store data that characterizes the plurality of predefined user agent strings, and a plurality of presentation capability nodes that store data that characterizes the plurality of predefined presentation capabilities of the client devices, wherein the plurality of presentation capability nodes are superior to the plurality of user agent nodes in the hierarchical arrangement; and a device classifier configured to receive, from the request processor, the received user agent strings and define a correlation of the received user agent strings with presentation capabilities of those of the client devices from which the incoming requests were received, the correlation based at least in part on partial matches between the received user agent strings and the plurality of predefined user agent strings characterized in the plurality of user agent nodes and traversing up the hierarchical arrangement to assign presentation capabilities characterized in those of the plurality of presentation capability nodes to the incoming requests.