Methods and apparatus for creating a base class for manipulating external data connections in a computer generated document

摘要

A method and apparatus for creating a base class and derived classes in an object-oriented computer programming environment that allows an application program to manipulate external data connections in a similar manner. The base class includes sufficient functionality for all external data connections regardless of the protocol of the data transfer mechanism that is utilized for the external data connection such that the specific function calls required from the application to implement each data transfer mechanism is hidden from the application. Thus, the application sees all external data connections as being similar because the application issues function calls only to the base class.