In a network including an information management server, a network device comprising:
- a data storage, a network interface, a processor, and a program memory;
- at least one requester application, including
- logic for assigning a unique requester application identifier to the at least one requester application, the requester application identifier not a user identifier and not a network communication address of the network device;
- information request logic for managing the transmission of requests to the information management server, the information request logic including a means of generating and sending a request, the request including user identification information and user authentication criteria, the requester application identifier, and at least one request type of one of add and update and delete and synchronize, where a request including a request type of add further includes at least one serial number for an information record of at least one different user account, where a request including a request type of delete further includes at least one serial number for an information record of at least one different user account, and where a request including a request type of update or of type synchronize does not include serial numbers for information records of different user accounts;
- data storage logic for creating, reading, updating and deleting information records in the data storage of the network device;
- information reply logic for managing the transmission of replies from the information management server, the information reply logic including a means of parsing each reply where the reply type of each reply is at least one of add and update and delete and information message, and
- where a reply of type add results in one of a message indicating that the request for an information record was not approved and a message that the request for an information record is pending approval and the requested information record and its associated serial number, the reply logic including a means of at least one of providing the received information to another logic module of the requester application, and invoking the data storage logic to add a new data record, store the contents of the information record received from the information management system in the new data record, and store the index of the new data record and the corresponding serial number of the received information record in a cross-reference,
- where a reply of type update results in one of a message indicating that the requester application is up to date and the at least one updated information record and its associated serial number, the reply logic including a means of at least one of providing the received updated information to another logic module of the requester application, and invoking the data storage logic and passing the at least one serial number to the data storage logic to retrieve the index of the corresponding data record from the cross-reference, retrieve the corresponding data record from the data storage and update the data record with the contents of the information record received from the information management system, and,
- where a reply of type delete results in at least one serial number for an information record to be deleted, the reply logic including a means of at least one of providing the received information to another logic module of the requester application, and invoking the data storage logic and passing the at least one serial number to the data storage logic to retrieve the index of the corresponding data record from the cross-reference, delete the corresponding data record from the data storage, and delete the index and serial number from the cross-reference.