Abstract: A method and system for employing client interfaces for packages. In one embodiment, an access object associated with a service provided by a first package is located, where the service is seeking to access content residing at a second package. A client interface is then created at the second package using the access object. The client interface is used to provide access to the content by exposing the content to the service via the client interface.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for configuring and executing complex software. The complex software may include code corresponding to a core layer and code corresponding to at least one of a plurality of industry extensions. A method for configuring software is provided that includes presenting at least one business set for selection by the user. The method further includes receiving a selection of at least one business set from the user, and receiving a selection of functions from the user based on the selected business set. The method further includes determining whether the selection of functions by the user is valid, and activating switches to enable software elements corresponding to the selected functions, if the user selection of the functions is determined to be valid.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for configuring and executing complex software. The complex software may include code corresponding to a core layer and code corresponding to at least one of a plurality of industry extensions. A method for configuring software is provided that includes presenting at least one business set for selection by the user. The method further includes receiving a selection of at least one business set from the user, and receiving a selection of functions from the user based on the selected business set. The method further includes determining whether the selection of functions by the user is valid, and activating switches to enable software elements corresponding to the selected functions, if the user selection of the functions is determined to be valid.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for providing tools for development of backwards compatible software are disclosed. A subset of software objects of a first software subsystem is identified and declared frozen. A changed introduced into a frozen software object is detected and prior to allowance of the change, the change is analyzed to determine whether the change is compatible with a second software subsystem.

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, 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: 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 generating a first application by providing a definition of an object representing a first set of attributes of a first collection of data elements and a first set of operations on the first collection, each data element in the first collection having the attributes and a list of the operations in common with other data elements from the first collection.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for implementing extensions for computer program applications. A program according to one aspect of the invention has instructions to receive an application call to an extension method defined in an extension object definition, the extension object definition having associated extension object implementations, the extension object implementations providing extension method implementations of the extension method; instructions operable to obtain results by calling multiple extension method implementations of the extension method; and instructions operable to respond to the application call using the results obtained from the extension method implementations. A method according to another aspect includes the steps of deploying multiple extension method implementations for an extension method; and executing the multiple extension method implementations to determine the results of calling the extension method.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, providing and using composite extension definitions. A composite extension definition has one or more extension definitions, each of which can be either an atomic or a non-atomic extension definition. In one aspect, a program has instructions to create a composite extension definition, to generate composite metadata that represents the composite extension definition, and to store the composite metadata for later use. The program can include instructions to receive input specifying dependency relationships between or among extensions defined by the extension definitions and to include the relationships in the composite metadata. Composite extension definitions can be created by an application developer for use by customers to guide them in implementing and deploying extensions to a computer program application.