Patent US 5,632,015

A system for processing diverse and non-diverse result sets is described. The system includes a client process in a client computer system that constructs a client process execution request identifying a stored procedure and specifying constraints on the quantity of response data that the client process is capable of handling. The client process execution request is transferred from the client process in the client computer system to a server process in a server computer system. The server process invokes the stored procedure identified by the client process execution request. Execution of the stored procedure results in the generation of answer set data for a plurality of diverse query result sets. Result set generators obtain answer set data for X of the query result sets, where X is defined by the constraints. The server process then generates an initial response containing, for each of the X query result sets, an amount of the obtained answer set data consistent with the constraints. The initial response is transferred from the server computer system to the client process in the client computer system. The client application is then able to access and process answer set data for the diverse result sets in any order.