A Collection Knowledge System provides context-sensitive knowledge delivery services to application programs, thereby enabling application programs to effectively support variant computational processes. In operation, a Collection Knowledge System receives knowledge requests from application programs, performs local and remote lookups into structured trees of knowledge, and returns requested knowledge to requesting application programs. Collection Knowledge Systems can manage knowledge for entire variant computational processes, thereby enabling application programs to calculate and execute many variant computational processes in fully automated, scalable ways that were not previously possible. As a consequence of automated process construction and execution, associated human labor costs are effectively reduced to zero.