Abstract: Electronic commerce method allowing a customer having an account with a first payment service provider based in a home network to purchase goods and services from a merchant having an account with a second payment service provider based in a remote network, including: first payment service provider with which a customer desiring a transaction with a merchant has an account; a home network on which first payment service provider is based; second payment service provider with which the merchant has an account; a remote network on which second payment service provider is based, by means of which the merchant communicates with the second payment service provider; at least two payment gateways, of which first payment gateway is associated with first payment service provider and second payment gateway is associated with second payment service provider; and a general network by means of which the payment gateways communicate.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are set forth for identifying the actual population of data within computer memory utilized to support a relational data base, where memory is defined herein as being "populated" if it is both allocated and actually filled with data. By identifying data population (thereby identifying unpopulated areas of memory versus simply making a determination of memory allocation without regard to how it is being used), utilities can be designed to recover memory resources, data base management techniques can be revised to more conservatively allocate memory, etc. Accordingly, memory resources can be more efficiently used and in certain instances the cost of adding memory to enhance a system can be delayed or eliminated.