Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, using placeholder objects in the communication of structures of data objects. A server can respond to a request for a complete structure of data objects with a partial structure that includes placeholder objects, each having a position in the partial structure, each representing content that is present in the complete structure but omitted in the partial structure. A client can accept the partial structure instead of the complete structure, can transmit a placeholder substitution request to the server identifying a placeholder object, and can receive in response to the request a further structure of data objects to replace the identified placeholder object.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including computer systems and program products, for personalizing applications. Context information and an identification of a first user interface (UI) element is transmitted to a repository. Personalization information for the first UI element is received from the repository, and used to display the first UI element in an application user interface. The personalization information includes first personalization data corresponding to a first personalization associated with the context information, and second personalization data corresponding to a second personalization associated with the context information. In some embodiments, a unified personalization framework, which can include a common user interface, a common functional interface, a common data model, and a common storage area, provides a uniform approach that can be used to personalize multiple types of UI elements in multiple applications and at multiple levels.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for providing services by an application server, the method including collecting a request from a consumer software component for a service from a provider software component, and checking the request against a set of semantic descriptions in a manifest of methods provided by objects in the provider software component.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for using a meta model for an enterprise service architecture. The meta model includes a first class to represent data organization in a back end data store. The first class includes a data type identifier attribute to permit meta data to identify a data type. The meta model also includes a second class associated with the first class. The second class includes a field identifier attribute to permit meta data to identify fields for a particular data type. The meta model also includes a third class associated with the first class. The third class includes an action identifier attribute to permit meta data to identify an action. In some examples, there is a service provider identifier to permit meta data to identify a service provider class that can effect the action.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, that include representing, in a repository, services from a server, the services including interacting with one or more collections of data elements using a set of operations on the data elements in the collections, the repository comprising descriptions of the collections and common attributes for each collection, the repository organized according to a meta model. The method also includes enabling a software entity to request a service represented in the repository, the service representing a first operation on one or more data elements in a first collection from the collections, and executing the first operation on the one or more data elements in the first collection.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and apparatus, including computer program products, for abstracting rendering logic and automatically generating platform-specific renderers from the abstracted rendering logic for multiple platforms. A platform-independent description of rendering logic for a control is specified. The platform-independent description is used to generate a platform-specific renderer for the control. The platform-specific renderer is operable to be executed on a specific platform to produce code that can be used in rendering the control on a client computer. Some implementations enable code for platform-specific renderers to be generated automatically based on centrally defined rendering logic. Rendering logic can thus be modified once and used to automatically update code and libraries for platform-specific renderers on multiple platforms.