Patent ID: 7698628

Claim:
A system comprising: a communications module implemented, at least partially, in hardware to receive a request to load an electronic form that reflects data values associated with one or more fields of the electronic form and also reflects attributes and properties of the electronic form, the attributes and properties comprising data associated with the electronic form that is not designated to be saved as part of user's application data, the attributes and properties including saved attributes and properties designated to persist between editing sessions of the electronic form; a merge module implemented, at least partially, in hardware to merge a template associated with the electronic form and the data values associated with the electronic form, the template corresponding to a blank unmodified version of the electronic form, to generate a form object; a delta extractor implemented, at least partially, in hardware to access delta data associated with the electronic form, the delta data comprising the saved attributes and properties associated with the electronic form, the delta data being stored separately from the template and from the data values; and an overlay module implemented, at least partially, in hardware to overlay the delta data onto the form object to generate the electronic form.