A versioning Application Programming Interface (API) is provided for a software platform based on an object-oriented platform-independent programming language. The versioning API includes (a) main interfaces defining versioning functionality, the main interfaces allowing access to the versioning functionality, (b) a functional implementation of the main interfaces, the functional implementation including classes and libraries implementing the versioning functionality, the classes including a reference to a program module to perform a requested versioning function, and (c) a user interface for using the versioning functionality. The versioning API may further include native programming interfaces allowing code written in the object-oriented platform-independent language to operate with code written in a native language other than the object-oriented platform-independent language. The classes and some libraries are written in an object-oriented platform-independent programming language. Some libraries may include software routines written in the native programming language, and implement the native programming interfaces.