1. A system, comprising: a processor; and storage coupled to the processor, wherein the storage stores program code, and wherein the processor executes the program code to perform operations, the operations comprising: providing a persistence provider that maps application level object types defined under a persistence object model that an application processes with physical data structure types defined under a physical data model for a database; and while an application that includes the persistence provider continues to execute, dynamically updating the persistence provider at runtime to access a new object of an application level object type by: adding a data element of a physical data structure type defined under the physical data model, wherein the physical data structure type is a type of a database object; obtaining dynamic configuration data that describes a structure of the added data element of the physical data structure type and that provides a mapping between the added data element of the physical data structure type and a new object of the application level object type defined under the persistence object model; in response to receiving a refresh event to update the persistence provider, updating the persistence provider with the dynamic configuration data for the added data element of the physical data structure type and with the mapping; and accessing, with the application, the added data element of the physical data structure type using the updated persistence provider to map the new object of the application level object type to the added data element of the physical data structure type.