Patent ID: 7730027

Claim:
A system comprising: a global data flow model representing a process of moving data from one or more data sources to a target application at a target system, the global flow model defining structural and record transformations to the data, the structural transformations representing mapping from a second storage hosting the data at the source system to a first storage at the target system; a first user interface and a second user interface; a first view generator that generates a first local view of at least a first portion of the global data flow model for display at first user interface, the first local view presenting a first user-specific subset of the graphical data representations in a first data flow model visualization configured for manipulation by a first user of the first user interface; a second view generator that generates a second local view of at least a second portion of the global data flow model for display at second user interface, the local view presenting a second user-specific subset of the graphical data representations in a second data flow model visualization configured for manipulation by a second user of the second user interface; a transformation engine communicating with the first view generator to receive at least one first change made to the at least first portion of the global data flow model, the at least one first change comprising a first structural transformation and a first record transformation to the data that are entered substantially simultaneously by interaction of a first user with the first user-specific subset of the graphical data representations in the first local view, the transformation engine also communicating with the second view generator to update the second local view based on the at least one change if the second user-specific subset of the graphical data representations includes the data affected by the first change; and wherein the first storage is connected to the transformation engine for receiving data transformations represented by the global data flow model, the first storage, the transformation engine, the first and second view generators, and the target application are included in the target system.