State management for a step architecture

An apparatus for and method of utilizing an Internet terminal to interface with an existing proprietary database management system by permitting a developer to create a web based service that produces a table result. The table may appear either as an HTML table or a graph. The service is defined as a plurality of ordered, discreet, and independent steps. Each step may be created and/or edited independently of all other steps. To assist the service developer, the system presents a choice of available steps to be added into the sequence at any particular point. The only steps so presented are valid for the position within the sequence. Invalid steps are not presented. During the development process, each selected step has a corresponding state report associated therewith. Each state report indicates the computational state resulting from the associated step to the next succeeding step in the sequence.