10. The method of claim 9 , wherein deriving the plurality of API calls for configuring the cloud-based deployment further comprises: deriving the plurality of API calls based on the respective groups of API calls associated with one or more of the plurality of core classes from which the one or more classes of the configuration specification are derived, and based on the plurality of protocols for modifying the respective groups of API calls.
9. A computer-implemented, comprising: receiving a configuration specification for configuring a cloud-based deployment, the configuration specification being written in a specification language and requiring instantiation of respective class definitions of one or more classes, each class modeling a respective data or functional component of the cloud-based deployment using a group of configurable class parameters, and the respective class definition of each class representing a requested state of the data or functional component modeled by the class; deriving a plurality of application programming interface (API) calls for configuring the cloud-based deployment based on the class definitions of the one or more classes; causing the plurality of API calls to be executed to configure the cloud-based deployment; storing respective class definitions of a plurality of core classes of the specification language, each core class corresponding to a modular component of a cloud-based environment, each core class being extendable with additional class parameters to configure the respective modular component; storing a mapping between each of the core classes and a respective group of API calls, the respective group of API calls for configuring the modular component associated with the core class according to the class parameters of the core class; and storing a plurality of protocols for modifying the respective groups of API calls associated with each core class to obtain a new group of API calls for a new class definition derived from the core class.