Object oriented data format mapping mechanism

An object oriented data format mapping mechanism provides a framework for mapping data from one or more stored formats to a desired format without custom-generating the conversion code from scratch. The extensible portions of the framework allow a programmer to extend the framework to define a particular data format mapping environment. The framework maps all data to rows, with individual data being accessed by specifying an index within the row. One or more mapped rows define entries in the desired format, but instead of containing data, they contain method calls to classes that perform the desired retrieval and/or manipulation of the data.