System and method for generating and transmitting a command in response to a request for additional data and data described in the request

A method and apparatus allows a client or other device separate from a server to retrieve from the server more data than is requested by an application program on the client. The additional data is maintained by the client or other device and provided to the application program in response to a subsequent request, reducing the number of times data is requested from the server, and also the processing and overhead required by the server to supply the data. If the server releases memory pointing to the data on the server at the time or after all data specified by the application program has been retrieved, because the data is potentially retrieved from the server in amounts larger than requested by the application program, the server may release memory pointing to the data on the server sooner than it would by processing requests for the data from the application program alone.