1. A method to programmatically generate source code for a software application to connect to a database, comprising: responsive to receiving a selection of a database connection specifying a database and a set of connection parameters of the database connection, establishing a connection to the database; retrieving a data model of the database, the data model comprising a set of database elements; displaying the set of database elements; responsive to receiving a selection of a database element from the set of database elements, generating a first source code to access the selected database element, comprising: generating a first portion of the first source code to create a connection to selected database; mapping at least one host variable to a column of the selected database element; generating a first database statement to access the selected database element using the at least one mapped host variable; and embedding the first database statement in a second portion of the first source code; and storing the first source code within a project associated with the software application.