Patent ID: 7739308

Claim:
A method comprising: a first party managing one or more database systems; receiving from a plurality of second parties, information for subscribing to database services supported by the one or more database systems managed by the first party, wherein the database services include services for storing and managing data provided by the second parties; and wherein the information is gathered during registration processes during which said second parties identify database resources, provided by the first party in support of said database services, for which the second parties are willing to pay; providing, to database applications controlled by the second parties access to the database services to which the second parties are subscribed; wherein the database applications controlled by the second parties interact with the one or more database systems managed by the first party by sending, to the one or more database systems, database commands that conform to a database language supported by the one or more database systems; whereby the second parties use the database applications under their control, while the database applications send the database commands to the one or more database systems managed by the first party, thereby obviating the need for the second parties to manage the one or more database systems used by their database applications; wherein execution of the database commands allows the second parties to manipulate data objects stored within at least one of the one or more database systems; delivering to one of said second parties, one or more messages which cause generation of one or more user interfaces that allow the second party to subscribe to said database services provided by said first party; delivering to a user associated with said one of said second parties, one or more messages which cause generation of one or more user interfaces that allow the user to access information in a database for a database service to which said one of said second parties has subscribed; and the first party configuring a database device used to provide said database services as one of: (a) a dedicated device or (b) a plurality of virtual devices; wherein the steps of receiving, providing, and delivering are performed by one or more computing devices.