Patent ID: 8516504

Claim:
A method of adding device information to a device database, the method comprising: receiving a device descriptor file, wherein the device descriptor file comprises a list of device types for a plurality of available devices, each device type being associated with a set of one or more attributes, each attribute being associated with a data type; reading the device descriptor file; parsing the list of device types from the device descriptor file; identifying a new device type in the list of device types, wherein the device type identifies a new type of device to be integrated with a computer-aided design (CAD) tool; assigning a sequential index value to the new device type; reading a new attribute associated with the new device type; adding the new attribute to a pre-existing data structure, wherein the new attribute is accessible in the pre-existing data structure via a reference to the new device type; compiling the pre-existing data structure, wherein the reference to the new device type is converted to a reference to the sequential index value; and preserving a second reference associated with a second sequential index value and a second device type previously added to the pre-existing data structure, wherein the compiled pre-existing data structure enables a previously compiled application to access the second device type via the second sequential index value without recompiling the application.