Information Sets for Data Management

According to one embodiment of the present invention, a system selects member objects from among data objects stored in one or more data sources by evaluating criteria against information about the data objects in an index, wherein the information about the data objects in the index is derived from the data sources. The system creates a set of data objects comprising a collection of references to the selected member objects, and associates the set with a set-identifier. The system receives a request to apply an action to a subset of the data objects stored in the one or more data sources, wherein the request specifies the subset by including the set-identifier, and applies the action to the set of data objects associated with the set-identifier within the request. Embodiments of the present invention further include methods and computer program-products for managing data in substantially the same manners described above.