[pnw_hazor]

The claims in the issued patent define exactly and only what the patent protects.

During the prosecution of the patent (the back and forth with the USPTO) the claims may be amended as long as there is support for the amendment in the description. The description (generally speaking) cannot be amended without refiling and losing the priority date.

These amendments are usually narrowing the independant claims to avoid prior art - similar to your example. Additional details from the descriptions are added to the claims until the examiner agrees that the prior is overcome.

The independent claims are the broadest, and the dependent claims add additional limitations (more or less) that are often directed optional features.

In this patent, which is pretty good for an old-time software patent, this element:

"(c) substituting the data entered by the user into the HTML input form into a dynamic SQL query using a common name space, wherein the common name space comprises variables found in both the dynamic SQL query and the HTML input form;"

is probably what convinced the examiner to allow the patent.