Patent US 5,504,906

A process for managing structured objects by an application interface which can furnish a plurality of services. The application interface defines a set of functions and a set of structured objects in public and private forms represented by descriptors and arranged in different classes, each class having a description. The application interface offers service primitives including parameters defined by the objects, and is also useable with other interfaces at different levels. The process uses a representation of private-objects that is substantially identical to the representation of public-objects, the parameters thus being generically handled, a public-object being represented by a descriptor table and a private-object being represented by a descriptor list. Additionally, the process uses a catalog organized according to a list of the various classes supported which allows the functions of the application interface to be automated.