PROVIDING COMMUNICATIONS LINKS IN A COMPUTER NETWORK

Provided is a gateway for linking between different communication models. The gateway, which may be implemented in a computer program installable on a server system, facilitates interoperation between computer programs which require synchronous communications sessions and computer programs based on an asynchronous model of communication. The invention enables a synchronously-connected client to revisit interactions with a server and asynchronously communicating programs, to interleave interactions with more than one application, and to associate together request-response pairs of a long running application. In particular, the invention provides apparatus and methods enabling linking between the Internet WWW service and a general purpose messaging system.