Within a computing environment, an application may run in a variety of contexts, e.g., as a natively executable application, as a client-side interpretable application embedded in a web browser, or as a server-side application that communicates with the user through a web interface presented on a device. The application may also access resources of the computing environment stored on multiple devices. The configuration of the application to operate equivalently in these diverse environments may be facilitated by representing the application within an object hierarchy representing the computing environment. The application may be configured to operate on the objects of the object hierarchy regardless of the location of the stored objects, to execute on any device, and to execute upon a standard set of application programming interfaces. The configuration of the application in this manner promotes the versatility of the application in operating equivalently in different programming contexts.