Patent ID: 7685561

Claim:
A computer-readable storage medium for use in a computing system to provide an application programming interface for a data platform, the application programming interface allowing access to multiple information formats in a generic manner, and the computer-readable medium comprising: one or more storage elements storing computer executable instructions, the computer-executable instructions including: a generic application programming interface (API) for a data platform, wherein the generic API includes: a generic data access component that exposes each of stores, sessions, transactions, and query services of the data platform, wherein the data platform is associated with a data store; a data classes component of canonical, application-independent classes that expose types and relationships of a data model of the data platform; a domain data classes component of application-specific and framework-specific classes that expose domain-specific properties and behaviors of the data platform, wherein a domain is different from an application; a schema class that provides access to tables of the schema, the schema class being derived from an untyped schema class; a TableSet class providing strongly typed access to tables defined within the schema; a StorageDomain class defining a store over which the rest of the classes in the API operate; a StorageContext class providing a context for a session, and defining the scope for at least one of identity management, change tracking or concurrency conflict handling, with methods for refreshing or saving chances to objects within a current context; a StorageSearcher class configured to build queries against the data store; and a StorageView class providing an application view over a set of results from a query.