Patent ID: 7971185

Claim:
A computer-based system for supporting data driving a software process, the system comprising: a choice of a plurality of defining attributes managers to allow selection, from the plurality of a defining attributes manager that provides; a defining attributes framework executing on a processor and receiving, from a user, input of a class of an object of a non-primitive data type, in absence of a pre-existing instance of the data type; and a user interface executing on the processor and providing to the user a description of the collection of attributes necessary to construct an instance of the object, based only on the class of the object, such that the system supports data driving the software process using objects of arbitrary data types and free of the user understanding any inner workings of the non-primitive data type in order to create and initialize the instance of the object using defining attribute data received from the user; using a map means to infer a desirable selection of the defining attributes manager; using the selected defining attributes manager to provide to the user the description of the collection of attributes necessary to construct the instance of the object, based only on the class of the object; receiving, in a single user step, user input of defining attribute data necessary to create the instance of the object and set it into a desired state, the received defining attribute data not including a pre-existing instance of the data type; using the selected defining attributes manager to create and initialize the instance of the object using the received defining attribute data; the receiving of the user input of the defining attribute data, and the creating and initializing of the instance of the object using the received defining attribute data, not requiring knowledge by the user of the constructors, methods, data structure and initialization sequence necessary to construct the instance of the object; and comparing more than one potentially different instance of the data type based on the defining attribute data.