Method and system for improving client-servlet communication

This application claims the right to foreign priority benefits under Title 35, United States Code Section 119 to European Patent Application No. 05108239.4, filed Sep. 8, 2005. This application also claims the benefit of PCT Patent Publication No. WO/2007/028670 A1, filed Jul. 26, 2006 as International Patent Application No. PCT/EP2006/064658, all of which is incorporated herein by reference.

The present invention relates in general to Client-Server communication, and in particular to improving the Client-Servlet communication on a public network without changing the existing communication protocol and without changing the client.

The term “Client-Server” refers to a network application architecture which comprises client and servers communicating with each other via a communication protocol (e.g. HTTP).

Web refers an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers(URIs). The Web is made up of three standards: The Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which specifies how each page of information is given a unique “address” at which it can be found; Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which specifies how the client and server send the information to each other, and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), a method of encoding the information so it can be displayed on a variety of devices.

The Web works as follow: When a client\'s web-browser (e.g. Microsoft\'s Internet Explorer, Apple\'s Safari) is opened, it communicates on behalf of the client (or computer being used) using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and makes a web page request. Once the request is sent, the client\'s web-browser computer will wait for a hypertext data stream from the server. When the server gets the request, it looks for the requested file and, if present, sends it to the client\'s web-browser as requested.

Servlets are programs running on a server which wait for requests coming from a client\'s web-browser and generate a response to this request (for example as a dynamically generated Web-page).

Conventionally, Servlets perform the following functions:

• • A client\'s web-browser sends an HTTP-request to the Servlet by invoking its URL. The client\'s web-browser is not necessarily aware that it is invoking a Servlet. Invoking a Servlet is like loading any other web page, the difference being that parameters can be passed in the request to the Servlet and that the response sent back by the server is not a static document but is dynamically generated.)

The request is analyzed by the application server hosting the Servlets and is passed to the Servlet corresponding to the demanded URL.

The request is analyzed by the Servlet, eventual parameters are parsed and interpreted, and a document to return to the client\'s web-browser, is dynamically generated (the content of the document may depend on the eventual parameters passed by the client\'s web-browser in the request).

The generated document is received by the clients web-browser and is displayed or interpreted (in case it contains some executable scripts like JavaScript).