13. The method of claim 9, wherein the one or more properties defined by the simple value profiles, group profiles and object link profiles include a minimum cardinality property that defines a minimum number of data entries that may be stored in the relational database for a corresponding attribute and a maximum cardinality property that defines a maximum number of data entries that may be stored in the relational database for a corresponding attribute, wherein the step of translating the semantic objects and their associated attributes into a relational database schema, further comprises the steps of: automatically creating a relational database table for each semantic object in the semantic object data model; automatically analyzing each attribute included associated with a semantic object to determine if it is a simple value attribute, and if so: reading the maximum cardinality property of the simple value attribute; automatically creating an additional column in the relational database table created for the semantic object to store data for the simple value attribute if the maximum cardinality is less than or equal to one; and otherwise automatically creating a separate relational database table to store data for the simple value attribute, the separate relational database table having at least two columns to store multiple data entries and one or more foreign keys that link an entry in the separate relational database table to an entry in the relational database table created for the semantic object with which the simple value attribute is associated.
9. A method of operating a computer system to create a relational database schema from a semantic object model, comprising the steps of: creating, in response to a user input, one or more semantic objects, each representing an item about which data is stored in a relational database; retrieving from a memory of the computer system a plurality of predefined profiles, each profile defining default values of one or more properties of a corresponding attribute; selecting, in response to user input, one of the plurality of predefined profiles and associating the selected profile with a semantic object in the semantic object model; automatically creating an attribute in the associated semantic object based on the selected profile, the attributes including simple value attributes that represent a data entry in a single column of the relational database group attributes having one or more member attributes that represent a logical collection of attributes and object link attributes that represent relationships between the semantic objects in the semantic object model, wherein each attribute has one or more properties having default values that are defined by the one or more properties of the selected profile; and translating the semantic objects and their associated attributes into a relational database schema.