Patent ID: 7177856

Claim:
A computer program usable medium storing program code which, when executed on a computerized device, causes the computerized device to execute a method for assembling, from within a host system operating environment, a result data group derived from related data from two or more data sources, one or more of the two or more data sources being an external data source to the host operating environment the, method comprising: providing a connection between the host operating environment and the one or more external data sources, through which external data is made available within the host operating environment; identifying one or more indexing data categories for determining relationship between data from each of the two or more data sources, each of the one or more indexing data categories being utilized in at least two of the two or more data source categorize data; utilizing data from the a least tow of the two or more data sources and categorized under at least one of the one or more indexing categories, identifying related data from at least tow of the two or more data sources; and utilizing the related data, assembling the result data group derived from the related data; wherein the method allows one or more client computers to access and manipulate data from the result data group through the host environment as a first class participant without requiring nonvolatile storage of external data as native data to the host environment.