Granular or Partial Locking Within an Application

A method to provide granular control in a software applications, the method comprising:

• during configuration of a software application by a first entity using a model driven development application that provides a graphical development environment interactive with the first entity, wherein the software application includes a plurality of objects with each object having at least one component, and wherein the first software application includes a first component and a second component in a hierarchical relationship in which the second component is hierarchically below the first component:
• displaying, within the graphical development environment, a representation of the graphical user interface of the first software application, including representations of the first and the second components,
• displaying, by the model driven development application, only within the graphical development environment, a first graphical selection element in a first position proximate the displayed representation of first component, wherein the first position is indicative of an association between the first graphical selection element and the displayed representation of the first component,
• setting, by the model driven development application, a lock status of the first component to a locked state based at least in part on an input via the first graphical selection element, and
• setting, by the model driven development application, a lock status of at least the second component to the locked state based on the hierarchical relationship between the first and the second components;
• setting, by the model driven development application, a relationship lock status of a first relationship between a first object and a second object, wherein each of the first and second components is a component of either the first or the second object;
• and
• publishing, by the model driven development application, the first software application with the respective lock status of the first component and at least the second component, and the relationship lock status, persistently set to the locked state to prevent modification within the graphical development environment of the first and the second components and of the first relationship between the first object and the second object of the first software application by a second entity, different from the first entity.