Abstract: A method of, and system for, interactively accessing information in response to a user command having a predefined operator and specifying one of a plurality of collections of information. The collections of information are stored in an object-oriented database in a hierarchical arrangement of data members. The hierarchical arrangement can include one level of data members and in which one of the data members is composed of a next level of data members. Each data member is stored according to one of a system-specified and a user-specified storage definition. A set of user-specified storage definitions is defined from the plurality of storage definitions. Upon detecting the user command, the specified collection of information is analyzed to determine which data members of the one level are stored according to one of the storage definitions of the set.