Architecture for uninterrupted access to business data by enabling work on rich client machines to be stored in a local business data cache that is always available. A dispatching mechanism executes read/write requests against the local cache transparently to a client application, an automatic synchronization mechanism propagates changes bi-directionally when the client goes online and a live connection with the corresponding backend data source is available. A declarative data access model is employed based on operation stereotyping and grouping that enables client applications to transparently execute create, read, update, delete, query (CRUDQ) and association operations against the local cache as if executed against the actual business data source. The architecture supports the offline creation of entities and sets of related entities when the entity identifiers are generated by the business data source and offline navigation of entity associations when foreign keys are not present in the related entities.