We define a general framework that includes objects such as tilings, Delone sets, functions and measures. We define local derivability and mutual local derivability (MLD) between any two of these objects in order to describe their interrelation. This is a generalization of the local derivability and MLD (or S-MLD) for tilings and Delone sets which are used in the literature, under a mild assumption. We show that several canonical maps in aperiodic order send an object P to one that is MLD with P. Moreover we show that, for an object P and a class Σ of objects, a mild condition on them assures that there exists some Q ∈ Σ that is MLD with P. As an application, we study pattern equivariant functions. In particular, we show that the space of all pattern-equivariant functions contains all the information of the original object up to MLD in a quite general setting.By this operation we forget the behavior of T outside C. 2. Some of the objects "include" other objects. For patches this means the usual inclusion of two sets; for measures this means one measure is a restriction of another. 3. They admit glueing operation. For example, suppose {P i | i ∈ I} is a family of patch such that if i, j ∈ I, T ∈ P i and S ∈ P j , then either S = T or S ∩ T = ∅. Then we can "glue" P i 's and obtain a patch i∈I P i .