Changes are managed in a multi-user database application environment. Proposed changes are collected, including changes to data, schema, and/or application descriptions. A user may specify foreign key relationships between items belonging to one or more of these categories. A view is produced showing the impact proposed changes would have on the environment if successfully committed. The user's proposed changes are ordered according to their dependencies, and submitted for committal together in a single transaction, subject to optimistic concurrency and consistency checks. For example, a proposed change to a data value may be inconsistent with a change which removed a data element containing the data value. The commitment operation may return identifiers and other return values, in addition to indicating whether the commitment was successful.