Abstract

A vault controller in an electronic business system includes a dispatcher for servicing browser requests initiated by a user for conducting business with an enterprise or organization using a vault process. The dispatcher further responds to a secure depositor receiving requests from other vault processes running in the controller. The request is in the form a URL containing an application domain/local context and application name. The request is detected and processed by event creator which forms an event object definitive of the request in the URL. An event handler parses the event object and enters a vault system application registry to locate the application in a shared memory. The location of the application is passed to a server pool, which assign a processing thread to handle the request. The thread engages a context manager which decrypts and imports application domain, application function and local context information from external storage to process the request. The application is located in the shared memory and the request implemented. The context manager encrypts and exports the processed information to external storage and provides a return code in the response to the user. The return code is used to locate the context information in a subsequent request by the user. The requests received from other vault processes through the secure depositor are handled in like manner to the user request. After execution of a user request, the vault process loops for some defined time during which other requests are received from the user. The absence of requests causes the vault process to shut down and store the variables for the next user request which retraces the steps of the original request.