Data management interoperability methods for heterogeneous directory structures

Claim 1

Method for use with a data management system having a plurality of repositories of data and a plurality of data managers operating in one or more application layers, comprising the steps of: providing a directory service for interacting with said data management system having a plurality of repositories of data and a plurality of data managers operating in one or more application layers, storing a plurality of data objects in said directory service and storing other data objects in data repositories of said data management system having a plurality of repositories of data and a plurality of data managers operating in one or more application layers and managing both said data objects and other data objects with a virtual control repository, and, using a single access application at a User Interface Layer of said one or more application layers of the data management system, mapping application transactions to an access method appropriate to a physical implementation of data storage used in said data management system and in said directory service, and in the process of mapping, classifying data objects of said directory service and of said data management system as data objects according to a PFVL Paradign according to Package, Filetype, Variance and Level, so that the PFVL Paradign serves as a common storage model for the storage of data objects both in the separate data storage used in said data management system and in the separate data storage used in said directory service, and managing the data objects residing in separate data storage to enable a directory service to interact with said data management system by: (a) acting on an initiated request from a client station for data classified according to the PFVL Paradign by determining whether the request should be directed to said directory service or to said data management system, (b) directing the request to the directory service or to said data management system as appropriate from the initiated request, (c) and employing one or more of said plurality of managers for processing the request and if the request is appropriate for the directory service causing at a service server for the directory service the processing of said initated request which was initiated from said client station and causing the return of any resulting data objects meeting the request along with related PFVL data associated with the returned data object to cause the addition, modification, or retrieval of data in the directory service, but (d) if the request is nor appropriate for the directory service, employing one or more of said plurality of managers for processing of said request in a traditional data management system, such as, but not limited to, relational or object oriented databases, meta data, commercially available storage engines or file systems.