Patent ID: 7596577

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for providing a specification for an application, the computer-implemented method comprising: receiving data inputted by a user to be used in the specification; wherein the specification describes what is to be included in an application and the inputted data includes workflow data related to an approval needed by a user to associate a feature with the specification in a database, wherein the workflow data includes permissions enforced by the database, and the feature is associated with an ordered list of tasks to be performed by the application; wherein the database comprises a relational database that includes a table of settings defined for all of the pages in the specification, and a table of page settings with relationships to the settings table; storing the data in the database, wherein the database stores the feature and at least one setting, the at least one setting specifying an input user interface control and an attribute in association with the at least one setting, the attribute including a valid range of input values for the input user interface control, wherein the application is thereby configured to only accept values within the valid range of input values in the input user interface control; generating a database query for a portion of the specification associated with the stored data received from the user; querying the database for the portion of the specification; receiving data from the database in response to the query; formatting the data accessed from the database by including a name of the feature and a name of the at least one setting in the formatted data and presenting the name of the feature in a heading of a page of the application; and incorporating the formatted data into the specification.