Abstract: When users, whether human or machine, want information, it is often unimportant to them where that information resides. A collection of information aggregation environments, such as the Universal Information Object Management Environment of the specification, becomes far more useful to users if information aggregated in one environment is easily aggregated by another. By assigning a virtual globally unique identifier to each object that is made available by any information aggregator in a way that captures the information necessary to get that information from the information aggregator in a common way, all of the information aggregation environments can use any of the data in any information aggregation environment transparently.

Abstract: Techniques and mechanisms for assigning a universal unique identifier to an instance of a plurality of information objects. In an embodiment, a first unique identifier is assigned to a first universal information object management environment and a second unique identifier is assigned to a plurality of information objects within the first information object management environment. Locally-unique identifiers are assigned each to a respective instance of the plurality of information objects, wherein a first information object management environment includes a first instance of the plurality of information objects. In another embodiment, a universal unique identifier for the first instance is created by collecting into a single key the first unique identifier, the second unique identifier and the locally-unique identifier assigned to the first instance.