Hi Michelle.

>> What I'm wondering is if there's any good resources out there that bridge the gap between getting this abstractly and knowing how to code it? Any good examples of actual code I could look at. <<

If you were at the Advisor DevCon in San Diego last September, Andy Kramek did a session on Class-based data management. Drew Speedie did a session on double-duty middle tier data handling objects both in San Diego and in Milwaukee at Whilfest. If you were at either of those conferences, the white papers and code samples could help get you started.

If you have one of the commercial frameworks, I bet you could tear one of them apart to see how they are implementing this.

I wish I could be of more help.