Method and apparatus for passing service requests and data from web based workstations directly to online transaction processing (OLTP) server systems

An apparatus for and method of processing service requests provided by a user at a standard Internet work station. The service requests are received by the server and routed to a gateway. The gateway has the capability to convert the service request to a format acceptable by an enterprise server without the need of a view buffer. Thus, the conversion does not require a priori notification concerning the data formats employed. The output of the gateway is coupled through a corresponding one of a number of connectors to the end service provider for honoring. The response is transferred from the service provider to the appropriate connector to be formatted for the requesting gateway. The response is converted by the original adapter to an HTML or XML message for transfer back to the requester via the Internet.