1. A fuel dispenser comprising: a communications interface adapted to transfer information between a remote system and said fuel dispenser; a communications processor associated with said communications interface and adapted to provide: a) a protocol service operating such that said information transferred between said fuel dispenser and said remote system is transferred in accordance with a defined protocol; b) a data type aware SGML service operating such that select operating data transferred from said remote system to said fuel dispenser in a data type aware SGML format is converted to a native format; and c) a storage service operating such that said select operating data is stored in an associated memory in said native format; and a controller adapted to control one or more operations of said fuel dispenser based on said select operating data stored in said associated memory.