The present invention provides methods and systems by for identifying, from within a host operating environment, related data from two or more data sources, one or more of which data sources being an external data source to a host operating environment, and for assembling a result data group derived from the related data. The result data group may be assembled as a virtual native document within the host operating environment, such that data from the data group may be accessed and manipulated as a first class participant through the host operating environment by client computers, without requiring nonvolatile storage of external data as native data to the host operating environment.