Systems and methodologies that facilitate evolving a data model via a combination of an explicit logical model definition, logical model changes, functional units, an explicit/implicit physical model and physical model changes, to derive a data model transformation are presented. Such an arrangement can provide for a rich set of transformations, which can be automatically applied to a data model instantiation. The subject invention facilitates leveraging a common set of code in data model instantiation evolution, by defining the set of transformations across an arbitrary data model.