Methods and apparatus for receiving a request from a user of a system, the request having a format defined by a template, expanding the request to combine user supplied data and data from a model component containing data for a component of the system to form an expanded request, wherein the expanded request has a predetermined format, acquiring information to determine how to process the expanded request, communicating with a host computer to extract information needed to satisfy the expanded request, generating an internal response to the expanded request containing the acquired information, inserting result data from the internal response into the model component, generating a user response to the user request, and sending the user response to the user to satisfy the user request.