Systems, techniques, and user interfaces are disclosed for an object-centric builder software that can utilize an ontology to design, configure, and build a workflow application that also references the ontology to perform a workflow. The ontology may serve as a data model for stored data associated with the particular workflow. The builder software may leverage the ontology to obtain advance knowledge of the availability and structure of the stored data that will be accessible to the workflow application at run-time, in order to build a workflow application that is well-tailored for that particular workflow. This approach may also result in flexible workflow applications that are easily built and maintained.