to the illustrative drawing of fig8 there is shown another exemplary sh list schema in accordance with the present invention the overall schema comprises sub lists or objects a b and c sub list a includes sub lists or objects a 1 and a 2 sub list b includes sub lists or objects b 1 b 2 and b 3 sub list c includes sub lists or objects c 1 and c 2 sub list b 2 includes sub lists or objects b 21 b 22 and b 23 the linkage between sub list b 2 and sub lists b 22 and b 23 is a dynamic linkage at the time when an sh list is resolved from the schema only one of the sub lists b 22 and b 23 will be substituted into the sh list schema the detailed steps whereby a typical schema is resolved to produce a sh list for a particular desktop are described below the use of dynamic linkage substitution to accommodate desktop platform changes will be better appreciated through the following illustrative example one desktop resource variable could be the operating system variable named u201c size u201d more accurately u201c zos u201d in one embodiment which could be os 2 u2122 or windows for example a change in the desktop operating system variable can change a sub list of resources that a desktop should have during a desktop configuration process the interrogation software sets values for desktop variable names such as operating system microprocessor type disk space memory size interrupts and installed.