Patent ID: 8762935

Claim:
An abstract component model system, implemented by computing hardware, comprising: an abstract component model to represent one or more artifacts, wherein the abstract component model contains a plurality of model objects; a lightweight structure model that contains a plurality of structure objects, wherein each structure object is a data structure that represents how a model object in the abstract component model should appear at the end of an update cycle; and a model updater operable to: match one or more structure objects in the lightweight structure model to one or more model objects in the abstract component model; and update each said model object in the one or more structure objects based on said one or more structure objects in a top-down, depth-first fashion; generate a model update set after updating a model object, wherein the model update set comprises a current list of child objects of each type, a list of structure objects that should be used to update or create objects of each type, and a factory to create model objects based on structure objects; and remove one or more model objects at end of the update cycle if the one or more model objects are not created or updated.