  Many combinatorial generating functions can be expressed as combinations of
symmetric functions, or extracted as sub-series and specializations from such
combinations. Gessel has outlined a large class of symmetric functions for
which the resulting generating functions are D-finite. We extend Gessel's work
by providing algorithms that compute differential equations these generating
functions satisfy in the case they are given as a scalar product of symmetric
functions in Gessel's class. Examples of applications to k-regular graphs and
Young tableaux with repeated entries are given. Asymptotic estimates are a
natural application of our method, which we illustrate on the same model of
Young tableaux. We also derive a seemingly new formula for the Kronecker
product of the sum of Schur functions with itself.

Combinatorics