1. A computer-implemented method for processing experimental data in a laboratory data management system according to an object model, the object model including a first pre-defined experiment class that is configured to be instantiated to define one or more experiment objects that represent data for particular experiments in the laboratory data management system, the method comprising: receiving, by a processor, input specifying a first set of one or more variable definition objects defining a set of variables for a first experiment type to be represented by the one or more instances of the first pre-defined experiment class, the variables in the set of variables having types selected from a predefined set of data types including attributes that are configured to be used to represent data for experiments in the laboratory data management system; receiving, by the processor, data for an experiment of the first experiment type, the data including a plurality of values corresponding to variables defined in the first set of one or more variable definition objects; storing a sparse representation of the data for the experiment of the first experiment type in a relational database table according to the set of types defined by the first set of one or more variable definition objects; and presenting a dense representation of the data for the experiment of the first experiment type, the dense representation being derived from the sparse representation by removing at least one empty data field from the sparse representation, and being presented in a relational database table defined according to the first set of one or more variable definition objects.