The Store service is part of the store-and-forward functionality (see Manual Forwarding for the other part). A store-and-forward system in a financial institution allows host transaction data to be stored so that it can later be forwarded on to the host system. This enables applications to hold onto transaction data information when there is no host communication, and makes the application independent of any occasional failure in the host link. The most common use of a store system is in off-line processing, when the host system is not available. A store object is used to keep the operation's information, instead of requesting an operation execution from an unavailable host. The application continues executing, and when the problem is resolved, operation data is retrieved by another application object called a forwarder, and forwarded to the host. The forwarder is responsible for the successful execution of the operation. The Store service stores host transaction data in a set of tables (such as flat indexed files or database tables). The Store service facilitates the development of a forwarder application that will process the stored data when the host connection is re-established. A sample forwarder application that works with the Store service is also provided with the toolkit. See Manual Forwarding (under Application Enablers).