Patent ID: 8898629

Claim:
A system for creating or updating a mobile application or portion thereof, the system comprising: a computing device having a processor and physical memory, the physical memory storing instructions that cause the processor to: provide a mobile application development platform adapted to assist users with creating or updating a mobile application or portion thereof, wherein the application development platform represents application data associated with the mobile application in accordance with a data model that defines relationships among a plurality of tables including: a head table that is used to represent an instance of the mobile application and that includes an identifier for the mobile application; an app type table that includes a first set of attributes for one or more templates that can be applied to the mobile application; and a module table that includes a second set of attributes that are used to represent one or more customizable components included in the mobile application; receive an application type property that identifies a template included in the app type table; present one or more customizable components that are associated with the identified template, each customizable component pertaining to a functionality, design or content of the mobile application or portion thereof; associate application data with the mobile application or portion thereof based, at least in part, on customizable component selections received via the one or more customizable components; store the application data associated with the mobile application or portion thereof in accordance with the data model; determine at least one target set of mobile devices on which the mobile application or portion thereof is to be executed; generate compiled data for the mobile application or portion thereof based on the stored application data, wherein generating compiled data includes querying a database that stores the tables associated with the data model to retrieve information associated with the mobile application; and generate a configuration file comprising the identifier for the mobile application or portion thereof, the configuration file being adapted for transmission to, and execution on, the target set of mobile devices, wherein the identifier enables the retrieval of at least a portion of the compiled data by the target set of mobile devices from a remote storage location in response to the mobile application being installed on or executed by the target set of mobile devices.