Abstract: A method and apparatus for the development, delivery and deployment of action-oriented business applications supported by a cloud based action server platform are provided. The cloud action platform enables the development, delivery and deployment of a new type of business application—Action Apps which are the opposite of traditional business applications which are large, expensive, viewed as an investment, hard to upgrade and oftentimes require training. The Action Apps are light-weight consumer friendly micro-apps that enable the business user to take the right actions, at the right time to produce the right business outcome. The action may be as simple as approving a vacation request, or it may trigger a series of more complex actions such as automatically discounting stock based upon competitors pricing within a specific radius in a given timeframe.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for the development, delivery and deployment of action-oriented business applications supported by a cloud based action server platform are provided. The cloud action platform enables the development, delivery and deployment of a new type of business application—Action Apps which are the opposite of traditional business applications which are large, expensive, viewed as an investment, hard to upgrade and oftentimes require training The Action Apps are light-weight consumer friendly micro-apps that enable the business user to take the right actions, at the right time to produce the right business outcome. The action may be as simple as approving a vacation request, or it may trigger a series of more complex actions such as automatically discounting stock based upon competitors pricing within a specific radius in a given timeframe.

Abstract: Methods and apparatuses for backing up data to a database are provided. A specified data set to be backed up is broken down into a plurality of data blocks, each data block is associated with a data block digest, and the data blocks and associated data block digests are stored in the database. When one or more data blocks are subsequently changed, an update to the backup may be performed by adding to the backup data only the data blocks that have changed since the initial backup. Methods and apparatuses for restoring backup data from a database are also provided. Timestamp information associated with the data blocks in the database is used to select the data blocks to be restored.