An application software platform is provided for use in a process plant or other environment to enable various different applications to run, to obtain access to, and to use data from various different assets in the plant or other asset environment in a consistent and easily understood manner. The software platform includes a class-based object structure or model that is set up and used to organize and to efficiently provide access to data about, generated by, or obtained from the assets in the plant. This class-based object structure may be used to provide efficient and organized communications between the various monitoring or other applications and the plant assets or sources of data. The class-based object structure is extensible and includes or defines various hierarchies of class objects that, in turn, define various levels of the assets or other physical or logic entities being monitored (i.e., from which or about which data is being obtained), as well as properties and behaviors of the assets or physical or logical entities being monitored.