Patent ID: 7870221

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: for entries that have been declared in a form and that identify available connections to data repositories and fields of the form that are associated with the connections, enabling a one-to-many mapping from fields in the form to one or more data repositories using declarative statements that specify a task to be performed, but not how the task is to be performed, wherein the entries comprise: one or more connect elements to indicate if a field of the form provides input, output, or both for at least one of the available connections associated with the field of the form; and a connection set comprising the at least one of the available connections, the method further comprising: (i) aggregating data from fields throughout the form, wherein the aggregating comprises: inspecting the declarative statements to identify the fields throughout the form providing data to one of the available connections; collecting the data from the identified fields throughout the form; (ii) exporting the aggregated data to a data repository associated with the one of the available connections, wherein the exporting comprises: constructing a message containing the aggregated data, wherein the message is formatted based on a data description; sending the message to the data repository; (iii) importing data from the data repository, wherein the importing comprises: receiving a response from the data repository, wherein the response contains the imported data in aggregated form; (iv) distributing the imported data to fields throughout the form, wherein the distributing comprises: inspecting the declarative statements to identify the fields throughout the form that receive data from the data repository; identifying extra data contained within the imported data, the extra data being unassociated with existing identified fields of the form; dynamically recreating the form to add extra fields corresponding to the extra data contained within the imported data; separating the imported data into data corresponding to each of the identified fields and extra fields; and providing the separated data to each of the identified and extra fields.