Patent ID: 8171023

Claim:
A computer comprising: at least one processor; a software application executable by the at least one processor of the computer, wherein the software application is part of an enterprise software system; a computer-readable medium storing serialized data in accordance with a data description language to define a hierarchical object model having a plurality of data objects, wherein the hierarchical object model represents a hierarchy of a dimension of a multidimensional database of the enterprise software system; and de-serialization software executable by the at least one processor of the computer, wherein, in response to receiving a first request to access a first one of the plurality of data objects, the de-serialization software (1) identifies a first portion of the serialized data at a first level of the hierarchy and data objects at levels above the first level without including data objects at levels below the first level, (2) processes the first portion of the serialized data to create the first one of the plurality of data objects in response to the first request, and (3) stores the first one of the plurality of data objects, and wherein, in response to receiving a second request to access a second one of the plurality of data objects, the de-serialization software (1) identifies a second portion of the serialized data at a second level of the hierarchy below the first level and data objects at levels between the first level and the second level without including data objects at levels below the second level, (2) processes the second portion of the serialized data to create the second one of the plurality of data objects, and (3) stores the second one of the plurality of data objects.