An apparatus for and method of utilizing an internet terminal coupled to
the world wide web to access an existing proprietary data base management
system having a dialog-based request format. The user request is received
by a web server from the world wide web and converted into one or more
sequenced data base management commands. These data base management
commands are sequentially presented to the data base management system
and the intermediate products stored. After all of the sequenced data
base management commands have been executed, the web server combines the
intermediate products to form a complete response to the initial user
request. The response is transferred to the user over the world wide web.
However, should the data base management system be unavailable to honor
the service request of a user, an unavailability message is transferred
from the data base management system indicating the unavailability.