1. A method to automatically generate software for an object to relational mapping system, the method including: reading class information respectively associated with each class of a plurality of classes; reading meta-data based on the class information; and automatically generating the plurality of classes based on the meta-data, the plurality of classes including a first class, a second class and a third class, the plurality of classes being used in the object to relational mapping system to enable an application program to access data that is persistently stored in a database and accessed by the application program from an instance of the first class, the first class being a data object class, the second class being utilized to create the instance of the data object class, the third class defining a plurality of read sets that respectively define a plurality of columns that are requested from the database by an instance of the third class and populated by the instance of the third class to the instance of the data object class.