Patent ID: 7185317

Claim:
A computer system for application development, comprising: a computer-implemented data modeling framework configured to enable an application developer to define a logical data model, to dynamically translate the logical data model into a corresponding physical data model, and to dynamically optimize the corresponding physical data model based on the defined logical data model, wherein changes to the logical data model are automatically adjusted in the physical data model accordingly in response to a command received from the application developer via the computer-implemented data modeling framework without having to invoke another database development framework external to the computer-implemented data modeling framework, such that the physical data model is automatically updated in response to the defined logical data model; and a computer-implemented application framework integrated within the data modeling framework as an integrated development environment (IDE), the application framework configured with application development tools and data management tools to enable the application developer to develop an enterprise application to access one or more databases represented by the physical data model, wherein through the IDE, the computer-implemented application framework is able to access the physical data model while the computer-implemented data modeling framework is able to substantially concurrently access the physical data model through the logical data model, wherein updated features represented by the updated physical data model are automatically available to the application developer via the computer-implemented application framework, and wherein the enterprise application being developed using the computer-implemented application framework automatically reflects the updated features.