Patent ID: 8813101

Claim:
A method for providing a framework that enables correlation of conceptually similar entities, comprising: providing a framework with a common set of domain-specific entity identifier types that a plurality of object models representing conceptually similar entities from a single domain can use to correlate to model-specific object instances, the model-specific object instances including object instances obtained from specific model instances, each domain-specific entity identifier type of the common set being implemented in an abstract class and describing a corresponding conceptual entity in the single domain; providing one or more extensibility mechanisms to allow third parties to extend the common set of domain-specific entity identifier types; receiving a request associated with the one or more extensibility mechanisms for at least one of a model handle or an entity identifier from a third party of the third parties; enabling a particular model-specific object instance of a particular one of the object models to be retrieved using the common set of domain-specific entity identifier types; and enabling an instance of a particular domain-specific entity identifier type to be retrieved from a corresponding one of the model-specific object instances.