Patent ID: 8280924

Claim:
In a computing network at which data is made available from a variety of different sources and in a variety of different data types and formats, a computer-implemented method for use at a computer system having a processor and memory, and which is running a database application configured to communicate with a database using at least one of a variety of different database schemas, the computer-implemented method facilitating the ability of the database application to more easily use the data from the variety of different sources, and comprising: receiving at the database application input data from a database; instantiating at the database application a metadata inferring module that infers object relational mapping (ORM) metadata for one or more database objects of the received input data, the ORM metadata inferred from at least one of the database schemas that the database application is configured to use, the inferred ORM metadata including an indication of database object properties and database schema settings associated with one or more database objects of the received input data, thereby allowing the database application to implement ORM capabilities to retrieve and access information from the database; instantiating at the database application an object relational mapping (ORM) query module configured to use ORM metadata to generate information that is used to generate an object graph, the ORM query module processing the ORM metadata for the one or more database objects of the received input data; instantiating an object graph generator and, using the information derived by the ORM query module after processing the ORM metadata, the object graph generator then mapping the one or more database objects of the input data into a graph of objects which enables the mapped one or more database objects to be sent to another application or to be subsequently displayed in an ORM object view.