Patent ID: 6934711

Claim:
A method, for use in a system having a host and one or more small computer system interface (SCSI) devices, the method enabling a user application accessing the system to communicate with one or more of the SCSI devices, comprising the steps of: querying a kernel component in the system for all SCSI devices in the system that are known to the kernel component; preparing a buffer of virtual handles at the kernel component in response to the querying step, each virtual handle representing a known SCSI device; forwarding the buffer to the user application; issuing a command data structure to the kernel component, the command data structure containing the virtual handles and command information; comparing, at the kernel component, each virtual handle to a list of SCSI device data structures of said SCSI devices known to the kernel component, and transporting the command data structure to SCSI devices, when there is a match between a virtual handle and a corresponding device data structure of a SCSI device.