A method and system for accessing devices through use of an abstraction layer interface that "hides" the access methods from components accessing the devices, such as device drivers and OPROMs. The abstraction layer interface includes a set of resource access methods and a database containing bus, device, function and resource information for various devices in a system. During an initialization process, bus and device configuration information is determined and stored in the database. When an application or operating system requests access to a device, the application or OS uses the device's device driver or OPROM to pass identification information, resource information and one or more resource access commands to the abstraction layer interface, which then verifies the identification information against the database, and converts the resource access request into appropriate resource access methods that are used to access the device.