A method of storing and managing BOMs of different owners in the same environment. One or more BOMs have an owner. An owner's BOM includes may include confidential information such that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any designates of the owner. In particular, one embodiment of the invention and maintains a list of items that include the items in the BOMs of the different owners. A unique identifier is used for each item of the list. The item identifiers thus form one namespace. BOMs of different owners share data including confidential data within the same namespace.