27. The stored program computer of claim 2 wherein: said transcript comprises a flag datum associated with each datum in said buffer retrieved from a modifiable column of said database table.
2. A stored program computer comprising: a central processor and a memory; a client application program in said memory; and a self-contained reusable database interface program object in said memory but external to the client application program and providing an interface between a computer database manager program for managing a database table and said client application program, the database interface object comprising: associations between columns of the database table and associated editing styles, each editing style specifying a display format for data of the associated column, said column/style associations specifying modifying methods for modifying data of respective columns of said database table, said database interface object providing to an applications programmer the ability to tailor said column/style associations to said database table without access to source code of said database interface object; a database communication portion for issuing database commands to the database manager program and receiving database results from the database through the database manager program; a portion, comprising methods, for communicating with said client application program and providing for reuse of said database interface object among a plurality of client application programs, said methods being routines invocable by receipt of a message from the user or client program and including: a retrieve method programmed to accept an invocation message from said client program, execution of said retrieve method using said column/style associations to issue commands to said database manager program to retrieve data from said database table into a buffer maintained by and within said database interface object; said modifying methods accepting directives to modify said retrieved data in said buffer and store a transcript of corresponding modification directives; and an update method programmed to accept an invocation message from said client program, execution of said update method using said column/style associations and said modification directives of said transcript to generate and issue commands to said database manager program to update the data of said database table in accordance with said modification directives.