1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for a client on a computer network to performing steps for accessing a database on the network via a server, comprising: receiving a description document from the server, the description document having class definitions for a generic object class and a plurality of object type classes derived from the generic class, and a plurality of database operation methods defined for the generic class, each object type class corresponding to a type of objects in the database, the description document including at least one flag statement identifying an object type; generating a database access request for performing a database operation on a selected object type, including: determining whether the selected object type is the object type identified by the flag statement; if the selected object type is the object type identified by the flag statement, creating an object of the selected object type using the class definition for the selected object type in the received description document; serializing the created object of the selected object type and including the serialized object in the request message.