Patent ID: 7536710

Claim:
In a computing environment in which there are a plurality of applications that each work with a common address book, a method for a first application of the plurality of applications to control access to data within the common address book, the method comprising: an act of a first application of a plurality of applications adding data to a common address book that is stored in one or more computer tangible storage media in a computing environment; an act of the first application specifying access logic that defines prerequisites that an application requesting access to the added data must meet before being granted access to the added data, wherein an intermediary component executes the access logic to determine whether the application requesting access is to be granted access to the added data, and wherein the access logic specifies that an application requesting access to the added data must be online while making the request; an act of a second application of the plurality of applications providing a request to the intermediary component, the request being for access to the added data within the common address book; an act of the intermediary component determining that the added data the is associated with the specified access logic; an act of the intermediary component executing the access logic determining and when in response to the act of executing the access logic; an act of granting the second application access to the requested of added data within the common address book if the second application is online while making the request such as to meet the prerequisites defined by the access logic and an act of not granting the second application access to the of added data within the common address book if the second application is offline while making the request such as to not meet the prerequisites defined by the access logic.