A system and method for accessing data located behind a security mechanism is provided. In the preferred embodiment, the system may use the common HTTP protocol and JDBC drivers. In more detail, a client may execute a Java applet that generates database proxy objects that are communicated to an application server using the HTTP protocol. The application server may use a servlet to process the objects and generate database requests using JDBC drivers so that the data is retrieved from the database for the client Java applet without the security problems.