According to some embodiments, an abstraction engine may determine a data manipulation definition generated by a creator platform to accesses a database via a first connection protocol (e.g., ODBC). The abstraction engine may then automatically analyze the data manipulation definition to discover a connectivity parameter (e.g., a DSN, a DBMS type, a DBMS host name, a port, etc.) associated with the access to the database via the first connection protocol. The data manipulation definition may then be stored along with the connectivity parameter as a meta-connection into a metadata repository. A consuming platform may retrieve the meta-connection from the metadata repository translate the meta-connection into the database manipulation definition to accesses the database via a second connection protocol (e.g., JDBC).