Patent ID: 7869585

Claim:
One or more computer storage media having stored thereon a data structure, the data structure comprising a declarative model that defines transformations to data as it passes between two or more services, but does not implement the transformations, the data structure including the following: a plurality of service identification fields, each identifying a service in a sequence of two or more services; a transformation class field specifying a class of transformation to be performed on either input data prior to being provided to the sequence of services, inter-service data provided between two services of the plurality of services in the sequence of services, or output data output from the sequence of services, wherein the input data, inter-service data, and output data are separate from the data structure; and one or more transformation parameter fields identifying one or more parameters of the class of transformation to thereby more specifically define the transformation; wherein the one or more computer storage media further store a transformation component and one or more transformation classes that are identified by the transformation class field of the data structure, and wherein upon receiving the data structure, the transformation component instantiates one or more objects derived from the one or more identified transformation classes and populates the one or more objects with the one or more parameters of the one or more transformation parameter fields, wherein once instantiated, the one or more objects are executed to perform the transformation specified in the transformation class field of the data structure on either the input data, the inter-service data, or the output data.