Patent Document ID: 7624399
Application ID: 10811063

Base Claim:
1. A computer system for identifying a target component in an apparatus that has components related in a hierarchy, the computer system comprising: a first computer operable to execute a first application, wherein the first application relates objects representing corresponding components in both a type hierarchy identifying types of components and a separate object hierarchy identifying information associated with objects, wherein the type hierarchy and the object hierarchy identify the components in a first natural language; a second computer coupled to the first computer via a network; wherein the first computer includes a message generator operable to receive information relating to both the type hierarchy and the object hierarchy from the first application and the message generator further operable to provide to the second computer a message comprising a type chain identifying a path in the type hierarchy in a parent-child direction and an object chain identifying a path in the object hierarchy in the parent-child direction, wherein the type chain identifies a type node associated with a target object and the object chain identifies an object node associated with the target object, wherein a combination of the type node and the object node identifies the target object that corresponds to the target component, and wherein a combination of ascendants of the type node and ascendants of the object node correspond to parent components; and wherein the second computer has a message interpreter operable to parse both chains to provide identification of the target component with the combination of the type node and the object node as well as to provide identification of the parent components with the combination of ascendants of the type node and ascendants of the object node, wherein the identification provided by the message interpreter further includes translating information from the first natural language to a different natural language using both the chains.

---

Claim 3:
3. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the message generator at the first computer is operable to append an identifier type to the type chain, and to append an identifier object to the object chain.