Patent ID: 7356615

Claim:
A computer server system, comprising a pluggable service delivery system that supports access to different types of backend services by different types of computing devices, the pluggable service delivery system comprising: a memory system to store programming instructions that are executable to implement a device abstraction layer, a kernel service engine, a service abstraction layer, and a processing system, the kernel service engine comprising: a runtime layer to provide online information access; an administrative layer to add and delete user, device, and service information; and a development layer to provide support for addition of new services and devices supported by the platform, wherein the processing system executes the stored programming instructions to: (i) implement the device abstraction layer to (1) receive service requests from different types of computing devices, (2) transform the received service requests into XML requests that are sent to and processed by the kernel service engine and (3) transform XML documents, which are received from the kernel service engine in response to the XML requests, into device specific formats supported by the computing devices; (ii) implement the kernel service engine to control access to different types of services through the service abstraction layer and to provide an XML interface between the device abstraction layer and the service abstraction layer; and to (iii) implement the service abstraction layer to (i) enable seamless access to the different types of services through invocation of backend data sources through service wrappers, wherein each service wrapper provides a standard interface to a corresponding one of the different types of services and (ii) transform data accessed from backend data sources into XML, formatted documents.