Patent ID: 8095256

Claim:
A method, carried out via a vehicle service tool including computer-readable data storage, a user interface, and a requestor application that requests vehicle attributes, the method comprising: receiving, from the requestor application, a first request for a first attribute of a given vehicle, wherein the first request for the first attribute of the given vehicle comprises (i) an indicator associated with the given vehicle, (ii) an indicator of the requestor application, and (iii) an indicator of the first vehicle attribute; and performing a first search of the data storage so as to determine whether the data storage contains the first attribute of the given vehicle as an attribute for both the requestor application and the given vehicle; wherein, if a result of the first search indicates that the data storage contains the first attribute of the given vehicle as an attribute for both the requestor application and the given vehicle, the method further comprises providing, from the data storage to the requestor application, the first attribute of the given vehicle contained within the data storage as an attribute for both the requestor application and the given vehicle, wherein, if the result of the first search indicates that the data storage does not contain the first attribute of the given vehicle as an attribute for both the requestor application and the given vehicle, the method further comprises performing a second search of the data storage so as to determine whether the data storage contains the first attribute of the given vehicle as an attribute associated with both another application and the given vehicle, and wherein, if a result of the second search indicates that the data storage contains the first attribute of the given vehicle as an attribute for both the other application and the given vehicle, the method further comprises providing, from the data storage to the requestor application, the first attribute of the given vehicle contained with the data storage as an attribute for both the other application and the given vehicle.