Patent ID: 6990480

Claim:
An information management method comprising the following steps executed by a computer: receiving a user definition of a first user-interface page containing one or more first page fields including a plurality of first page reference fields, and for each first page reference field a respective agent set vector; receiving a user definition of multiple instances of the first user-interface page, wherein the user definition for each instance of the first user-interface page specifies a respective value for each first page field including a respective set of first page reference field values, wherein the respective set of first page reference field values uniquely distinguishes each instance of the first user-interface page from each other instance of the first user-interface page; automatically storing each instance of the first user-interface page as a respective first page instance metaobject in a data storage medium without abstracting the instance of the first user-interface page into a database record, wherein each first page instance metaobject contains (A) first page attributes, including the agent set vector for each first page reference field, and (B) for each of the one or more first page fields, a respective first page field object that has (i) a value attribute that contains a field value, if any, that a user has entered into the first page field in the instance of the first page, (ii) a calculation attribute that contains a calculation if a calculation is assigned to the first page field, (iii) functional state attributes that cooperatively define a functional state of the first page field, and (iv) at least one appearance attribute that contains at least one appearance definition for the first page field; and thereafter (i) receiving from a user a given set of first page reference field values for the first user-interface page and (ii) responsively retrieving from the data storage medium a given first page instance metaobject whose reference field values match the given set of first page reference field values, and displaying a corresponding instance of the first user-interface page, including all first page field values defined by the given first page instance metaobject, whereby the user can readily retrieve a previously entered instance of the first user-interface page by simply entering the reference field values of the previously entered instance.