1. A computer system having a physical computer-readable medium including computer executable instructions comprising at least a portion of a supervisory process control and manufacturing information system application distributable to a plurality of networked computer devices and having a layered architecture, the application comprising: application objects that model entities within a process control system; engine objects that host execution of the application objects in a run-time environment; platform objects, corresponding to a physical computer system component for executing the engine objects and associated application objects, and wherein the platform objects host one or more of the engine objects; and wherein the application objects communicate on a same computing device through the engine objects, and communications across a network of computing devices are supported by the platform objects, thereby insulating communications between application objects from the topology of a computer system within which the application objects execute.