Abstract: The inventive system and method distributes information between databases and web servers, via a plurality of interconnected platforms or nodes. The invention includes a session manager, that is resident on only one platform and manages the information flow between the databases and the web servers. The invention also includes a plurality of data gateways, with at least one data gateway resident on each platform. The session manager uses a manager thread to determine which platform will operate on the request. A processing thread of the data gateway invokes an application module to create an application, which retrieves the requested information from the database. The processing thread translates the request into a format useable by the application. The processing thread retrieves a dynamic HTML template file and uses the information retrieved from the database to populate the HTML template file to form the response to the request, and passes the response onto the one global network server.

Abstract: A system for sorting randomly oriented objects of various sizes based upon the size of the object includes a transport for conveying a series of objects from an input location to one of a plurality of output locations. An image system is disposed along the transport for capturing the image of each object to be sorted. An image processor detects the minimum and maximum linear dimension of each object based upon the captured image. The image processor further determines the shape of each object based upon the captured image. The minimum or maximum linear dimension is selected based upon the shape of the object. The object is categorized by size based upon the selected minimum or maximum dimension. Structure is provided for selectively routing the object based upon the categorized object size to one of the plurality of output locations.