A method, a substation automation apparatus and an intelligent electronic device (IED) are disclosed which are, for example, not limited only to publishing data (data emanating) from the IED. An exemplary method includes assigning a unique identifier to one or more data fields, where the one or more data fields is associated with a short address attribute in the data emanating from the intelligent electronic device; and dynamically updating the identifier based on user specific configuration data by an IED application configuration tool. The IED can include a list of functions; (e.g., each function being represented as a logical node; and each logical node containing data objects); and a flexible addressing scheme for configuring the data objects and publishing data from the IED, but not only data emanating from IED.