Patent ID: 7739693

Claim:
A method comprising: providing a connection class to include generic routines to connect to peripheral devices, the connection class to be independent of device-specific features of the peripheral devices; providing a plurality of parameters to define specific features of the peripheral devices; receiving a request to access one of the peripheral devices; determining whether the requested peripheral device is accessible; if the request is a request to connect a computer to the requested peripheral device and the requested peripheral device is accessible, instantiating the connection class to create an object specific to the requested peripheral device, using the instantiated object to cause a native driver of the requested peripheral device to execute, and connecting, through the native driver, the computer to the requested peripheral device based upon the parameters of the requested peripheral device; and if the request is a request from the requested peripheral device to send data to the computer, notifying the computer that the requested peripheral device has the data, instantiating the connection class to create an object specific to the requested peripheral device, using the instantiated object to cause the native driver of the requested peripheral device to execute, connecting, through the native driver, the computer to the requested peripheral device; and sending the data from the requested peripheral device to the computer.