getting back to your original question, the way to interrogate objects in AS is through the use of DSO (Decision Support OBjects).  This is very easy to do with VB6, slightly harder with VBScript (no object typing ) and OK(ish) with .net (I've used C#) but a little more cumbersome because of the poor object model used in AS2K (bring on Yukon!).

There are many example scripts/VB code on websites (like msdn) that can get you started, as well as BOL.