Patent ID: 7974993

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of supporting version management, the method comprising: receiving a request from a first software application; selecting and loading, from a plurality of assemblies that are each of a different version of a second software application, a particular assembly that corresponds to the request and is a version-specific assembly specific to a particular one of the different version of the second software application, wherein selecting comprises selecting without regard to which version of the second software application the first version of the software application is configured to support; utilizing the particular assembly to obtain or generate a particular object that is of a particular version of the second software application that is one of said different versions; and returning the particular object to the first software application in response to the request despite the fact that the first software application does not support interfaces of the particular version of the second software application, the particular object being multi-version compatible in that it is configured to be cast in accordance with multiple of the different versions of the second software application.